It's a LoveHate Relationship
by zoey21q
Summary: A collection of short stories concerning Blaine and his sister and their very, very interesting relationship.
1. I Can No Longer Listen to Keane

**Edit as of 10-5-11: Hello! Thank you for clicking on my story! If you are a new reader, I feel obligated to tell you that chapters 1 through 4 are season two, chapters 5-30 are over the summer, head-cannon kinds of stories (strong OC involvement) and if you're looking for season two, it starts after chapter 31. Thanks again and I hope you enjoy! **

**This really is nothing more than the result of a lot of pent-up creative energy. It's silly and kind of stupid, but cute. Enjoy!**

She was having a pretty good day. That is, she was having a good day until she opened the door to her house, and was about to make her way to the kitchen when she almost stepped on her brother.

Her confident, put-together, straight-and-narrow, dapper-as-hell brother was flat on his back in the middle of the floor. His shoes were in a pile by his feet like he had just fallen there and kicked them off; his blue blazer was hanging off the arm of the couch, obviously just having been tossed there; his eyes were closed tightly and his ear-buds were in, his phone sitting on his chest.

She rolled her eyes.

Slowly, she walked over to him and waved a hand over his face. Sighing impatiently, she tapped his shoulder with the toe of her shoe, and he sprang up. A single ear-bud fell out into his lap, and from it she could hear a familiar show tune.

"_Cats_?" she asked, crossing her arms. "You haven't seen that play in six years."

He sighed sadly, and looked down at his phone, pausing the song. "It's a classic," he mumbled. "It's Webber." He lay back on the floor with a sigh. "Webber's a genius."

"Agreed, but don't you think 'Memory' is just a little melodramatic?" She raised an eyebrow and leaned over him.

"It is not melodramatic. It is a perfect representation of how I'm feeling at this moment." He crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes again, reaching for his phone.

She was faster.

"He's changing schools, man," she said as she grabbed the chord to his ear-buds, and the phone along with them. "Not going to the Heaviside Layer."

"Leaving that courtyard was the most difficult thing I have ever done…" he whined.

"Dude…" A hand flew to her temple.

"And then…and he said he'd never say goodbye…" He let out a shaky breath. "…and then _I_ had to…"

"Oh, my gosh, just…" She put a hand in the air in attempt to stop his rambling.

"And then—God, Wes and David!—they wouldn't stop talking…"

"They're your friends, I'm sure they were just trying to help—" she began to offer, before being cut off by another strained garble by the pitiful shell of something resembling her brother on the floor.

"They brought up 'Blackbird'…" he groaned.

"Oh, God, I thought they were your friends?" She cursed the boys in her head, promising to let _them_ baby-sit him the next time anything happened to make him sad.

He let out a noise that sounded somewhere between a moan and a whine and reached half-heartedly for his phone, a lazy hand grabbing at the air.

She could never let anything make him sad again. This was too painful…mostly because she couldn't stand seeing her brother upset, but also because she was fighting with every ounce of restraint she had not to record all of this and put it on Facebook.

"Wait!" she almost screamed, but her brother's only reaction was to cover his face with his hands.

_Oh, for the love of God_.

"Dude, school got out two hours ago! Why aren't you two sitting at your little coffee shop, making the rest of this town uncomfortable with your no doubt incessant PDA?" She smiled cheekily. "Or here, so I could finally meet him!"

He stared at her through his fingers. Even through one eye she could easily read his 'you-are-so-no-helping' look.

"I'm just asking."

"Barbaravention," he grumbled.

"I…w-what the f—?"

"I don't even _know_." He shook his head and sighed.

She stared down at him for another second.

"Get off the floor." She said it kindly, but it was a command none the less.

"No. I like the change of perspective. It helps me see things in a different light."

"I said get your metaphorical ass off the floor." She crossed her arms. "You won't get your phone until you're vertical."

"I don't care anymore…" he sighed, putting his hands behind his head.

"Oh would you stop being so freakin' dramatic! You will see him in twenty-four—!" But then something stopped her.

His phone was buzzing.

Yes.

Someone was calling her brother.

YES.

It was the boyfriend.

_YES!_

The lump on the floor didn't notice.

_This could not have been more perfect._

Without hesitation, she flicked the phone on and said brightly, "Hello, Blaine's phone, who's this?"

There was complete silence other than the creak of the floor as her brother sat up. She ran.

"Uh…hi," a surprised sounding voice squeaked on the other end as she bolted down the hall and locked the door to her room. "It's Kurt."

"Hey, Kurt!" she said loudly, speaking to the door, just as the sound of running stopped, and the crack of a fist on wood rang through the house.

"_OPEN THE DOOR, DEL_!" her brother screamed.

"In a minute, Blaine! I'm just trying figure this guy out." She sat on her bed and spoke into the phone again. "I apologize, for that."

"Um…" the voice on the other end stuttered.

"So, tell me about yourself, Kurt."

"Um…"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Adele, but you can just call me Del if you want. I'm the annoying little sister." She smiled despite knowing he wouldn't see it. She could hear Blaine pacing and mumbling outside.

"Right…hi."

She rolled her eyes. "We've gotten past that, buddy, now spill. I need to know get to know you! You sing, that's fairly obvious, so tell me, what kind of music do you like?"

"Um…"

She was getting impatient.

"Dude, chill. I'm fourteen. I'm not going to kill you if you say something stupid. So, please, who is the allusive Kurt Hummel?"

"_I SWEAR, DEL, IF YOU SAY ANYTHING TO EMBARRASS ME I WILL _PERSONALLY_—!_" her brother continued to holler, but the end of his (hollow) threat was drowned out by Kurt actually saying something coherent. Wow.

"Why did you steal his phone?" His voice was nice, definitely a singer.

"Because he was being mopey and these days his phone is the only way to motivate him," she said very matter-of-factly.

"Oh," he said, his tone somewhere between concerned and endearing. "Why's he moping?"

"Because he's a sentimental sap. And he's officially added every Keane song he owns to his 'too emotion-provoking to function' playlist."

"He has a playlist for—?"

"I'm just kidding. Seriously, though, he's ruined that band for himself." She laughed. "Now, tell me, what about you. Do you have a 'too emotion-provoking to function' playlist?"

"I have…something of the sort."

She snorted back a laugh. "I'm sorry," she chuckled again. "That was so not what I was expecting to hear!"

"_WHAT WERE'NT YOU EXPECTING? C'MON, DEL, GIVE ME BACK MY PHONE!_"

"Is that him screaming?" Kurt said quickly.

"Yeah. He kinda got out of the moping and into the screaming once his phone rang."

"Hmm."

"_DEL!_" There was another round of heavy rapping on her door.

"You know what, Kurt? I kinda like you, but I'm afraid that if I hold his phone hostage any longer, I will need to get a new door."

"Oh, um…is he really that mad?"

"Probably not." She reached for the doorknob, but paused. "One more thing, Kurt?"

"Hmm?"

"What the hell is a Barbaravention?"

"Um…" he hemmed and hawed for a second. "I figure someone must have recorded it. I'll send you a video."

"Sounds good." She opened the door just as Blaine was bout to delve into another string of rants. He was poised in front of the door, his face red and a finger in the air. "Your boyfriend." She handed him the phone casually and turned back into her room, closing the door behind her.

"_Kurt…? Yeah, hi._" She could hear him through the door. "_No,_ _I have _not _shunned Keane… Yeah…? Well I'm glad you like her… probably not for a long time…_"

She smiled and sat down on her bed. She was so glad he wasn't moping; she couldn't stand to see him sad.

She still wished she had recorded it, though.

**PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!**


	2. Mornings in the Anderson Household

**This really isn't a next chapter, just a semi-related drabble. Never the less, I thank you most sincerely for reading it and am thoroughly taken back by the number of people who subscribed to my first chapter (especially when I thought it was going to be a one-shot).**

**ENJOY! **

She paced up and down the hall, her arms crossed with a pile of clothes under her arm, snarling curses under her breath. It was almost unheard of for her not to be dressed by now, but then again, it was almost unheard of for her alarm not to go off, and almost unheard of for her to sleep almost twenty minutes too late, and almost unheard of for her brother to beat her to the bathroom.

She banged on the door again. "I'M SURE YOU'RE PLENTY PRETTY, NOW GET A MOVE ON, I HAVE TO GET READY!"

Her brother stuck his head out. His hair was a mess and he had his toothbrush in his mouth. This was most certainly heard of. "Wha' was dat?" he said with a mouthful of toothpaste.

"I said I need to get ready, now hurry up!" She got in his face and glared at him, scowling. _Great_, she thought. _Still stubbly. I'm going to miss the bus!_

"Yeah, rea' scary, five-two." He turned around and closed the door in her face.

"I WOULDN'T BE TALKING, FIVE-SEVEN!" she huffed.

She heard him spit. "FIVE-SEVEN, _AND A HALF_!" Gargling, and more spit. "USE MOM'S BATHROOM!"

"SHE'S GOT A BIG MEETING TODAY! SHE'S BEEN BLOWDRYING SINCE I WOKE UP!"

A small click, then the buzz of an electric razor. "Well, then life really sucks for you right now, doesn't it?" She heard him laughing. "_Ow!_"

"THAT'S CALLED KARMA, DUDE, _KAR-MA_!"

She ran back in her room in desperate search of a hairbrush that she _didn't_ leave in the bathroom by accident (for the fifth day in a row), but when she came up empty, she proceeded to pace and curse some more. Checking the clock in the kitchen, she ran back to the bathroom door and pounded it again. "MOVE IT, DUDE!" The sound of gel being squirt out of a bottle only made her more nervous. This could take a while. "I NEED TO LEAVE THIS HOUSE IN TWELVE MINUTES!"

"AND YOU WILL!" Suddenly the door swung open, and aside from the fact that he was still in his Star Wars pajama pants, her brother actually looked like a respectable human being. How the hell he managed to go from yeti to something remotely presentable every morning was beyond her. "How do I look?" he asked, smiling sarcastically.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're beautiful, now move." She grabbed him by the t-shirt and pulled him, staggering, from the doorway. "If I miss the bus, you're gonna have to drive me!"

"Fine, but I guaranty I won't have to!"

She slammed the bathroom door and began to run a comb through her hair.

~x~

Fifteen minutes later, she was standing at the end of her driveway, the five dollar bill that was her lunch money clenched in her teeth, holding her left shoe in one hand and her wide-open backpack in the other, watching as her bus sped over the hill on her road and out of sight. With as much composure as she could muster, she slipped on her shoe, tucked the money in her pocket, zipped up her backpack and turned towards the house, before loosing it all together.

"BLAINE ANDERSON, GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE, YOU'RE TAKING ME TO SCHOOL!" She stormed towards the house.

When she finally made it inside, he was sprawled out on the couch, watching the news, completely oblivious to her hollering.

"BLAINE!"

"Aw, sh—!" he muttered under his breath as he turned off the television.

"That's right! C'mon, let's go." She crossed her arms and began tapping her foot.

"What about Mom? _I_ don't have to be to school for another half hour!"

"_I_ don't give a rat's ass about your effed-up private school schedule! You agreed." She pointed a finger at him. And besides"—she paused for a moment, listening for something—"she's _still_ blow-drying."

"My school's schedule isn't effed…" he said dejectedly.

"I DON'T REALLY CARE; I NEED TO BE TO SCHOOL _NOW_!" She through her hands up and turned towards the door, grabbing his keys from the hook in the hall and left for the garage. As she marched across the grass of her front lawn, she heard the slamming of the front door and her brother shouting something like, "bye, Mom!" over her shoulder.

"This is so not my fault, Del," he panted, catching up to her outside the garage door. "It was your alarm clock that turned on you."

"Says the guy with the crunchy hair. You cannot honestly tell me that you didn't take your sweet time this morning with your gel-job." She threw open the passenger side door of his blue hand-me-down Nissan and tossed her bag on the floor before taking a seat.

"Alright. You got me. I'm sorry." He backed out of the driveway and headed in the same direction the bus had gone in. "I deal with the same thing every day."

"Please. You just told me you don't have to be to school for another half hour." She uncrossed her arms from their angry, defensive position and began fiddling with the radio.

"Hey, don't mess with that, I've got it on my favorite station!"

She glared at him.

"…that I can always put it back to," he laughed.

After a few seconds of surfing, she finally found a good song in the sea of static and commercials.

"Aw, damn it," Blaine muttered when they reached the first stop sign. "Here," he handed her his phone. "I knew I was forgetting something. Text Wes and tell him that I'll be late for rehearsals this morning." When they started driving again, it was at a considerably faster speed.

"Okay." She unlocked his phone and began to shuffle through his contacts for 'Wes' when it suddenly gave a small 'bleep'.

She noted the corners of his mouth twitch.

"Um…it's probably no one," he said, shaking his head to compose himself. "Don't mind it, just text Wes."

"'No one' doesn't text you at seven-o-six in the morning," she opened his messages. "But Kurt does." He winced, trying to hide a smile. "Aww!" she squealed, reading the text over to herself.

"What? What does it say?" His eyes darted between her and the road.

"Oh, nothing bad. Just, 'good morning, handsome'."

He blushed. "Why is it that every time you touch my phone, he's on the other end!" Blaine's knuckles were turning white as he gripped the steering wheel.

"More karma. The stars want me to meet him." She immediately began composing a reply.

"I think the stars will have to be patien—WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?"

"Relax. I just said that it was me and I said hi and told him that you two are adorable in the morning." She smiled and actually started looking for Wes's number again.

"You didn't," he sighed.

"I did…Aha!" She began to write a quick message to Wes as her brother groaned. "Running…late…" she read as she typed. "Won't…be at…rehearsals …was…a…biotch…to…my…sister…T-T-Y-L. _Send_!"

"Sometimes I legitimately hate you."

She smiled cheekily at him.

When they pulled into the school parking lot, she practically fell out of his car, sprinting towards the front door.

"DEL, WAIT!" Blaine called suddenly.

"WHAT?" she screamed exasperatedly over her shoulder.

"GIVE ME BACK MY PHONE!"

Please review! It makes me so happy! Also, Tumblr? (zoey21q . tumblr . com) ;-]


	3. The Story of a Story

**This really just kind of came to me. It's not meant to be anything other than fluffy. I hope you like it. **

The entire house was dark except for the glow of her laptop in the kitchen; the entire house was quiet except for the sound of furious typing; and the entire house was asleep, except for her. Sure, she was tired, but she needed to finish this…this chapter at least! There were people that were waiting for it.

There was a stack of Pepsi cans on the floor beside her, and remains of a bag of Fritos sat on the table beside her. The power cord to her computer was taut, having been plugged in behind the refrigerator and strung across the counter. The sudden sound of the floor creaking made her jump.

"Del…" her brother yawned. "Go to bed." He rounded the corner into the kitchen and sat across from her.

"I can't!" She looked back to the screen. "I need to get this finished."

"Del, it's four in the morning."

"And what are you doing up, huh?" She shot him a quick glare and returned to her typing.

"Do you know what typing sounds like to someone who's only half awake?" He rubbed his eyes. "_Nails on a friggin' chalkboard_."

"Well excuse me. It's not my fault you can never sleep."

"But it's your fault tonight!" He yawned again. "Please go to bed."

"I'm almost done, though."

"How many words?" he sighed.

"Four-thousand seven hundred eighty six," she said flatly, not looking up.

"That's…awesome," he said drowsily. "What's this one about?"

She looked at him funny. "You're crazy, right? Blaine, you never care about my stories."

"Better the devil you know than the devil you don't!" he said shrugging, and moved around to sit next to her.

"Nice. Really, really"—she yawned again—"nice." She rolled her eyes and continued to type.

"At least I'm trying here, Del."

"Trying but not succeeding!" she chimed.

"Fine. I honestly, genuinely, sincerely, whole-heartedly want to know what this…_next great_ _American_ _novel_ is about." He propped his head up in his hands on the edge of the table and stared at her. "Even at four-fifteen am."

She scowled back at him, but finally sighed, giving up. "It's a love story…" she began smiling to herself. "It's only just barely started, though."

"Almost five-thousand words is what you count as 'barely started'?" He furrowed his brow and tried to see the screen. She turned it away from him.

"I once posted a fan fiction for _Gilmore Girls_ that had over eighty thousand, and that was just some pent up energy." She gave him a look that read somewhere between 'come at me bro' and 'get the point?'

"Alright. Understood. Five-thousand words is nothing. Continue."

"So it's one of those epic romances, you know? Modern fairytale: Like they're separated by distance and by society and everything, but somehow they always seem to get together in the end…" She turned and smiled fondly to herself.

"I see. Epic romance. Sounds…epic."

"Your eloquence astounds me," she huffed sarcastically and turned back to her laptop. "Anyway, so no one they knew would think that they would ever fall for each other. You have your bold and brash versus your quiet, bookish and contemplative."

"Interesting…" He tried to sneak a peak at the computer again, but she was too fast, and closed it almost immediately. "Modern fairytale? Where exactly does a modern fairytale take place?"

"I'm getting there!" she sighed, before yawning again. "So, like any good fairytale, you know, there has to be a little bit of magic."

"Of course." It was amazing; he actually seemed half-interested.

"So I set it somewhere magic just floats around…or at least in my head it does."

"Where's that?" he asked, lifting a quizzical eyebrow.

"New York City." She looked at him and smiled.

He smiled back.

"Now I'm not going to call them star-crossed—would you believe that at two in the morning I had to look up what that meant? Anyway, I'm not calling them that because there really is nothing keeping them apart in the beginning, and I think they most definitely could be happy…it will just take some time."

"As they should. Love just doesn't happen…I think the world needs a realistic fairytale for once. We could still get the happy ending and the magic and the little woodland creatures—"

"There are most definitely are woodland creatures in Central Park."

"Exactly," he snickered. "But with more down to earth people and situations. Like students, or a taxi driver or a doctor or something…" he trailed off, staring into space.

"Are you sure you didn't hack my computer? Because that's essentially my story." She looked at him funny.

"Um…no. I promise." He laughed. "Wait, you've got a _taxi driver_ and a _doctor_ falling in love in a _woodland creature infested_ New York City?"

"Not exactly, but close." She sighed. "No, they're students, but one's like this rich, almost bitchy kinda person, and the other is waiting tables at night just to pay tuition…" Her eyes grew distant, and she really was just talking to herself now. "And one day, by chance, they cross each other's paths, and it's a love-at-first-sight kind of thing…" She sighed dreamily. "And they start make time to see each other, but you know, nothing can ever be perfect…"

He nodded, staring at the back of the computer.

"So they have their troubles. Things like money issues and age-old class systems and faithfulness and stuff gets in the way…"

"Are you sure you're only fourteen? How the hell do you know about this kind of stuff?"

"I watch Gossip Girl." She smiled cheekily.

"Okay… So? What do they do?" His face had gone from confusion to genuinely concerned. "Do they ever work it out?"

"Well, they both graduate, and hoity-toity gets all super successful and gets on with life, and the other is left just kind of wondering what went wrong…"

"And that's it? They never see each other again? Del, you can't leave me hanging like this!" He was almost whining.

"Don't fret yourself." She patted him on the head. "Years later, they reunite of course, and I haven't written this far but I plan to add something very Cinderella-esque. Nothing as material as a shoe though. Like a song or something. Yeah, they'll both be at charity dinner or something—because they will both end up fabulously rich, of course—and they'll just be hanging to the side, all morose because they wish they could be out there dancing to _that_ song with _that_ person…"

"And…?"

"And something cute will happen, like they'll see each other across the dance floor, and run at each other like, 'o-m-g I never loved anyone but you!' and stuff like that."

"That sounds cheesy and fantastic." He smiled and yawned once again.

"It is cheesy and fantastic, but I've hit a snag."

"How far have you gotten?"

"I've just got to the part where they meet. I have to introduce them to each other…but I can't think of good names. Or well, I can't use the names I want to use." Begrudgingly, she saved her document and turned off her laptop.

"Why's that?" They both stood up, stretching.

"Well, I've done my research. You know that little paragraph in the front of fictional books before or after or under the copyright or whatever that's all, 'the characters in this book are in no way meant to resemble any persons living or dead' blah, blah, blah…?" She took a step out of the kitchen and towards her room, a certain swing to her step.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Well, if I use the names I want, my book can't honestly say that." She smiled.

He furrowed his brow. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Blaine and Kurt would officially make it nonfiction."

"You wro-" he stuttered, the words catching in his throat. He leaned up against the counter, a gigantic, giddy, watery grin on his face, his eyes closed, and was quiet for a long time. "You're awesome," he finally choked. "Now go to sleep."

"G'night."

**Please, please, please review! It means so much to me! And as if I haven't begged enough in the last two chapters… (zoey21q . tumblr . com) …I'll love you for it!**


	4. Our Lives Suck

**This is not a new chapter, but it does fallow the theme. If it's familiar to anyone, that's because I have it published separately too, but I did want to just organize it here as well. Sorry if you were expecting something new.**

The two sat on the couch in their darkened living room silently, gnawing their way irately through a bag of red licorice. They moved almost in unison, with sharp, aggravated actions: one would grab a stick of licorice, taking a heated bite off the end, while the other flipped absentmindedly through television channels…then they'd switch, tossing the remote, sliding the bag across the couch, and continuing the familiar pattern.

Their conversation consisted of short bursts like, "I hate this show," "we need to keep more candy in this house," and "I hate my life." Their phones sat on the coffee table in front of them, eerily and mockingly silent.

"I win," the girl said, pulling out the final piece of candy, balling up the bag and throwing it onto the table uncaringly.

"Congratulations," he sighed, propping his head up into his hand and leaning it on the arm of the couch. "Now what?"

"I honestly don't know. We've never made it through a whole bag before." She pushed a strand of curly black hair out of her eyes, and watched her brother do the same.

"We've never had a problem at the same time." He yawned. "What time is it?"

She glanced at her phone. "About two-thirty in the morning." She groaned, then. "We've been sitting here for four hours, we've finished off an _entire bag_ of candy, and we're still moping!" She threw her hands up and slumped further into the couch. "Our lives suck."

There was a moment of silence when she thought he fell asleep.

"Del?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah, what?" she snapped.

"What's wrong with us?"

Without skipping a beat, she answered, "I'm passive-aggressive and you're emotionally distant." She sighed and crossed her arms across her chest. "But other than that, we're just peachy."

"Oh. Okay," he said, like it was nothing less than what he was expecting.

Then there was more sleep-like silence.

"Del?" he asked again, less quietly.

"What?" She tilted her head and shot him a glare out of the corner of her eye.

"Is either of us ever going to be able to have a relationship?" He reached morosely for his phone. "I mean one without any drama?"

"Shouldn't I be asking you this kind of stuff, 'big brother'?" She emphasized the last words with air-quotes, smiling sarcastically at the thought of him giving her any kind of advice.

"Yeah, right." He put her thoughts to words. "Hey, when did Mom and Dad get back?" he asked, noticing his father's coat on its hanger by the door.

"Eh, somewhere between eleven and eleven-thirty. All I heard is that the banquet was a bust. I was still crying and you were threatening to start," she chuckled. "So they threw the bag of licorice at us and went to bed."

"Are we really that predictable?" He furrowed his brow and stared at his phone again.

"In a word, yes." She grabbed the remote from her brother's hands and flipped a few channels. "_Up _is on ABC Family. Sound good?"

"Sure. No romance," he said cynically. "The wife dies in the first seven minutes."

After a contemplating pause, she said finally, "I kinda like you dark. It's a nice change from that 'Dapper-Dan' fellow you always try to be."

He blew a low '_pfft_' through his teeth, and shot her a look that read somewhere between 'shut-the-fudge-up' and 'you're-totally-right.'

They were quiet for a while, watching the movie uninterestedly, only sighing here and there or laughing briefly at the program's stupid jokes.

"What exactly happened?" he finally asked at the commercial.

"What do you mean?" she said, glancing at her phone.

"I thought you liked this guy. I thought you two were going strong."

"He and I _were_ going strong. So were he and Jackie, and he and Liz, and he and Tanya." She fiddled with her hair again. "That's what you get for dating a football guy."

"Ouch," was all he could muster.

"Your turn," she finally said. "What exactly happened with you? Any more serenades at the shopping mall?"

Once again he glared at her, but this time the meaning was clear as day: 'don't-even-go-there.'

"No!" he said indignantly.

"Then what?"

"Pav died today," he sighed, hanging his head.

"Okay," she began. "I know you liked that bird and stuff—heck, _I _liked that bird—but we're talking about relationships here, and you're starting to freak me out."

"Shut up and let me finish," he snarled.

"Fine, fine. So Pav died…?" She turned to face him, trying to look interested.

"Well, remember the new kid I told you about?" His eyes were distant.

"Yeah…Kevin or something, right?"

"Kurt," he said firmly, still not looking at her.

"Right, right, Kurt…Oh! Did you feed him to the sharks for killing the bird?" A menacingly excited smile spread across her face.

"Dude," he said flatly, tilting his head and looking at her square in the eyes.

"Fine! So what about this Kurt fellow?"

"We were all there in the meeting room today, getting ready for Regionals, wondering where he was…when the doors opened…and in he walks…" he trailed off, lost in thought.

"And he walked in…?" she repeated, trying to rouse his thoughts.

"And…and he walked in and he was _crying"_ he squeezed his eyes shut, as if saying the words pained him. "And…I don't know if I've ever felt that bad for someone in my entire life…I just—I… I couldn't stand to see him so sad."

She smiled wearily.

"You're not supposed to smile at that!" he whined. "You're supposed to go 'aww!' or do whatever sappy girly thing you people do!"

"Aw," she said half-heartedly. "Now continue."

He sighed. "And then…and then he started _singing"_ he sighed the word, closing his eyes again."And it was like…" He held his hands in the air, as if waiting to catch the right words should they fall from the sky. "…It was like nothing I've ever heard before."

She gave him a knowing look. "You know the next question I'm going to ask." She crossed her arms and stared him down, waiting for his reply.

"Yeah, I do," he said begrudgingly.

"Well…?" She raised her eyebrows in expectation.

"…Yes," he said quickly, bracing himself for his sisters reaction.

"THEN GO FOR IT YOU _BOZO_!" she screamed, throwing a pillow at him.

"Del, be reasonable, I just can't—!"

"Yes—you—can!" she hollered between continuing to wallop her brother. "I'm so sick of your sulking around! We need to _get_ you some!"

"DEL!" he screamed, grabbing the pillow and staring at her aghast.

"Fine, fine, we'll work on that this summer…"

"No we wo—!"

"The point is," she cut him off. "That you have a golden opportunity hanging in front of you and you're too consumed with self-pity to realize it!"

"I am not self-pitying."

"Yes, you are."

"No!"

"Yes!"

"No!"

"Anyway…" She diverted the conversation. "I can tell that you like him. I can tell that you like him _a lot._ Even if you can't."

"And who says he likes me?" he answered slowly, darkly.

"Oh, for the love of all things holy, would you stop being so freakin modest!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Let's see," she began, rolling her eyes. "You lead the Warblers," she counted on her fingers as she rattled on. "You look like a freakin' _Abercrombie and Fitch model_; you'll probably get accepted to Harvard and Yale and Princeton but blow it off for some kind of art school somewhere—which I would totally support, by the way," she gave him a kind smile. "You play like _seven_ different instruments; you do community frickin' service, and somehow, your head is _still_ of normal size." She took a breath. "Everyone either wants to date you or be you, and if this Kurt guy doesn't, then he's _obviously_ straight."

He just blinked at her.

"My point made." She slouched back into the couch. "Final couple questions though:"

"Yeah?" he said, dazed.

"Is he cute?"

"I suppose," he said blushing

"What'd he sing?"

"Blackbird…" he sighed.

"Oh, God! A cute Beatles' fan! If you don't grab him up fast, I will!" She clasped her hands under her chin and went limp, dramatically laying over the armrest.

"You're certainly feeling better."

"Well," she said, sitting up quickly. "You're happy, I'm happy." She sighed. "And besides, there are plenty of less jack-assy fish in the sea…" She smiled slyly. "And you go to an all-boys' school." She stood and stretched.

"No! I refuse to set you up with any of my friends."

"Fine!" she said finally. "I'm going to bed." She started down the hall. "Oh, but if you see Thad anytime soon, tell him I said hi…and that he's far too kind."

"Ha, ha, ha, very funny. You're _real_ smooth…." He laughed sarcastically.

"Weird. That's what he said the other day." As her brother's eyes grew wide with confusion and something like anger, she dashed around the corner with a quick 'good night' and fell into bed, tired, but happy.

**~X~**

The next day, her brother came home from school late, almost gliding through the door, humming a light tune and smiling.

He swept into the living room and fell onto the couch absentmindedly.

"Hey," she said as she came around the corner, making him jump.

"Hey," he said, panting, but still smiling.

"I like that face. That's the 'my-sister-was-so-right' face."

"That's because my sister was so right." He patted the couch next to him, and she sat down, quickly turning to face him.

"Was it everything this fifteen year old girl could ever imagine?" she crooned. "Did you like, profess your love in front of the whole school or something romantic like that?"

"No," he said flatly, a euphoric grin still tugging at the corners of his mouth. "He was bedazzling Pav's coffin." He scrunched his nose as he said this and looked off into space, smirking still. "And I just walked in and…" He stuck out a hand as if to say, 'and that's all folks!'

"Awwwww!" she squealed.

"See! Now that is an appropriate response!"

They sat there smiling for a second.

"One last question, I promise."

"Okay…" he said dreamily.

She giggled a little. "Did ya kiss him?" she said in a very singsong tone.

He coughed. "What do you think came after the 'just walked in and…'?"

She smiled. "One more question now."

"What?"

"Is he a _good_ kisser?"

He blushed. "Don't you have homework or something?"

"That's totally a yes." She stood and took a step towards her room. "I had a pretty good day, too."

"Oh yeah?"

"Ian asked me out." She smiled. "Normal, average, nice Ian."

"That sounds fantastic."

"It is." She rounded the corner. "Happy homeworking!" she called over her shoulder.

"Yeah…" he said, picking up his phone.

**So I was inspired by a whole bunch of Blaine Sister stories, and this just kind of happened. I'm not totally satisfied with it, but I hope you liked it! Reviews, signed or anonymous, are always welcome.**


	5. Pancakes

She shuffled out of her room that morning at eight. It was Saturday. This was wrong and she knew it.

But something smelled really, really, really good in her kitchen.

That was wrong, too.

So in her grey sweatpants, _Harry Potter_ t-shirt, and lime green bathrobe, her hair no doubt resembling something only slightly more pleasant than ball of steel wool and her eyes still adjusting to the light of day, she trudged down the hall towards that good, out-of-place smell.

She heard a noise from her kitchen.

Someone had broken into her house and between stealing all of their jewelry and murdering them, decided to make…pancakes?

Mmm, pancakes.

"Who's in my kitchen?" she yawned, rounding the corner cautiously. She took a deep breath. "And can I have some of those before you kill me?"

"Morning, sunshine!" he brother said brightly. Great.

"Why…how…do you, just…?" she stuttered. "What are you _on_?"

He laughed cheerily. "Honestly?"

She shrugged.

"Caffeine." He pointed over his shoulder at the coffee maker. "That thing makes six cups." He laughed again. "_Six cups_!"

"And how many did you drink, dude?"

"Not all of it." He took a swig from a mug on the table "Just five."

She stared at him gaping, silent for a moment. He looked no more put together than she did, but over his sweatpants and t-shirt was a ratty apron. He turned back to the stove.

"Coffee is your crack, isn't it?" She walked slowly over to the refrigerator.

With a flick of his wrist, four more pancakes jumped put of the pan and onto a waiting plate. "Yeah, pretty much."

"That's not healthy." She poured herself a glass of orange juice and sat back at the table. "Caffeine stunts growth. That's why you're so short."

"I'm not short!" he said indignantly.

"Whatever…" The rest of her thought was drowned in her drink.

A few moments passed.

"Okay," she said, plunking her empty glass on the table. "Now that I'm conscious, what the hell are you doing making pancakes at eight in the morning on Saturday?"

"Actually, I was up at seven." He turned off the burner and dropped a huge, batter-coated mixing bowl into the sink.

"Okay," she sighed. "What the hell were you doing making pancakes at_ seven_ in the morning on a Saturday?"

"Nothing…" He wrapped a layer of aluminum foil over the plate full of pancakes and darted out of the kitchen down the hall.

"You are lying!" She stood up slowly and took a step towards the counter.

"Yes, I am!" She heard the door of his closet open.

"Then what are they for?" She walked closer.

"I'm not going to tell you! You'll laugh at me!" He dashed across the hall from his room into the bathroom.

"Maybe. You should tell me anyway though." She began to toy with the edges of the foil, trying to be as quiet as possible.

"I refuse!" She heard the water go on, then the sound of brushing teeth. Carefully, she peeled back the foil and—"DEL, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT TOUCHING THOSE PANCAKES!"

"Fine! Just tell me what they're for!" Against all instincts, she crimped the edges back over the plate and walked down the hall, tired of screaming at a wall.

"I will tell you right before I leave, I promise."

"Where you goin'?" She paced up and down the halls.

"Not telling." He ran back across the hall and into his room.

"You know, I'm not eight anymore. You can tell me where you're going with three dozen pancakes without fear of ridicule or having to explain anything awkward." She crossed her arms and leaned on the wall. "I have the internet! I could totally look up 'pancakes' on Urban Dictionary!" When there was no response, she went into her room and started to get dressed.

"_It's nothing important! Don't worry about it_!" he screamed through two doors. There was a long pause. "_And stay off of Urban Dictionary_…" He sighed in disgust. "_Please_!"

Ten minutes later, she emerged from her bedroom fully dressed and awake, but very hungry. Following that wonderful smell once again, she sauntered down the hall, not noticing that her brother was neither in his room nor the bathroom.

Once in the kitchen, she was only slightly put out to find that the plate of pancakes were gone, and so were the keys to the Nissan.

She sat at the table, contemplating many things: where her brother could have gone; why he brought pancakes; what would happen if she _did_ decide to look 'pancake' up in Urban Dictionary; and if she should just throw all caution to the wind and try to cook her own breakfast for once.

Sighing, she stood and went for the refrigerator once again, reaching absentmindedly for the bottle of milk. But when she grabbed the handle, something caught her attention. A note was taped to the side:

_Kurt has a cold, bringing him breakfast. There are four pancakes on a plate in the microwave. Tell Mom I went to the gym or something and will do my dishes when I get home. Shouldn't be long. You need to sleep later._

_~B._

She looked over to the sink, brimming with bowls and soapy water, then made her way (milk bottle in hand) over to the microwave and turned it on for a minute. Sighing, she poured herself a glass of milk, folded the note to put it in her pocket, returned the bottle to the refrigerator, and removed her pancakes from the microwave.

Taking a bite, she sat back down and almost fell asleep again, thinking.

Wow, theses are good.

Man, he's such a good brother.

Man, he's such a good boyfriend.

Maybe I should do the dishes.

Nah.

He's right, I would have laughed at him.

These really are good.

I should definitely sleep later.

**I apologize for how short this is, I just needed to get something out there. I hope you liked it. And please, everyone says they don't like to leave long reviews. I LOVE LONG REVIEWS! The longer the better! And, of course… (zoey21q . tumblr . com) THANK YOU!**


	6. Welcome Summer!

**Sorry it took me so long to get this up!**

School had gotten out yesterday.

She would probably sleep until tomorrow.

Or at least, that was the plan, but after thirteen hours of sleep, something—be it your family, your stomach or your bladder—usually wakes you up.

It was the phone.

At noon on that glorious June day, her cell phone rang, stirring her from the most peaceful sleep she had enjoyed since September.

"Hello?" she sighed, rubbing her eyes.

"Del, it's Lori. It's summer!" her friend squealed.

"Yeah, I know…Goodnight."

"It's noon, Del, wake up!" Her friend sounded like she was hopping.

"I know it's noon. That means I've been asleep for less than twenty four hours, so don't worry about me. Goodnight."

"Del!"

"What do you _want_?" she whined.

"Wanna hang out?"

"Today?" she groaned.

"Today!"

"Fine." She sat up and stretched, yawning. "Swing by my house whenever. Just give me ten or fifteen minutes to get dressed, okay?" The phone on speaker, she set it down and walked over to her closet. "I swear you're worse than—"

"_HAPPY SUMMER!_" a bright, cheery voice called from outside her door.

"Ooh! Tell Blaine I said hi!" Lori chimed.

"Bouncy?" Del hollered.

"_Yeah_?" he called.

"Lori says hi."

"_HI LORI_!"

Lori laughed. "Why's he so chipper?"

"Well, for starters, his blood caffeine content is probably about fifty percent." She rolled her eyes and continued to shuffle through her closet. "And he's had some major cabin fever since Christmas break. I think another week and he would have blown up."

"Ew…would not want to have to scrape him off the walls."

"Nope."

"So I'll see you in fifteen?" Lori asked, as Del pulled on a pair of jeans.

"See ya."

Dressed, Del headed out to the kitchen and sat at the table. Her brother was doing the crossword, sitting sideways on the chair.

"Mom at work already?" she asked casually, flipping through the stack of read newspaper for the funnies.

"It's noon."

Del shrugged.

"So," he slapped down his pencil suddenly and looked at her intently. "Where are you and Lori going today?" He smiled cheekily.

"Um…I was thinkin' the couch." She raised an eyebrow and nodded towards the living room.

"Ha ha ha…" He laughed sarcastically and folded the newspaper. "See, that's not gonna work."

"And why is that?" Del sighed uninterestedly.

"Because. Del," he snickered a little. "Sis. Ol' buddy, ol' pal..." he went to pat her on the head. She grabbed his wrist.

"What?"

He sighed heavily, turned to face her and spoke very fast, "Kurt and I have had today planned for weeks, Del. _Weeks_! Please, please, _please_ go somewhere else!" He looked across the table at her and pouted. "Please?"

"I don't know. Lori really just wanted to hang out…"

"Please!" he begged.

"Oh, come now! Why can't we all just all hang out together?" She smiled slyly.

His face went from pleading to serious, and he stared at her through narrowed eyes. "What do you want?"

"What ever do you mean?" she asked airily, fluttering her eyelashes.

"Money? A ride somewhere?" He hemmed and hawed for a moment, thinking. "Money?" he finally blurt out, his hands in the air. "What will it take to get you out of this house?" He fell limp on the table, looking up at her pathetically.

"Well, Lori should be here in ten minutes… What about Kurt?"

"Hmm?" Blaine muttered, his cheek still pressed to the glass of their tabletop.

"What time is Kurt supposed to be here?"

He popped up almost immediately. "Soon. Too soon for comfort actually."

"Oh. Just wondering."

"Please just go! Why is everything a battle with you?"

"It's my job. It keeps you on your toes." She stood up from the table and grabbed a pear from a bowl on the counter. "Fine," she spoke between bites. "If I can get a ride and, say…fifty bucks?"—he nodded furiously—"Then I will move our little party to the mall."

"DONE!" He bolted from the table and down the hall, making a beeline for his wallet.

Del sat back at the table, smiling contently to herself.

Then the doorbell rang.

"I'LL GET IT!" she screamed down the hall.

"NO YOU WON'T!" Blaine came running out of his room, around the corner to the kitchen and came to a screeching halt in front of Del, his back to the front door. "I've got it," he said breathlessly, handing her a wad of bills.

"Knock your socks off." She pocketed the money and watched as he turned around and very, very slowly cracked the front door.

"Hey!" she heard someone say cheerily as Blaine stepped back, looking no less than relieved, and let a tall, skinny, frizzy-haired girl in.

"Hi, Lori," Blaine sighed, checking his watch. "Alrighty! Let's go!" He grabbed his keys from the hook by the door and headed towards the garage. Del and Lori stood watching him.

"Where's he going?" Lori asked, thoroughly confused.

"Oh, he's bribed us into going to the mall today." She headed down the hall. "Tell him I'll be there in a minute. I gotta get my purse."

"Will do." Lori then followed the path from the front porch across the lawn, down a few steps into the driveway and over to the garage door.

Blaine was sitting in his car, clutching the steering wheel, his eyes darting back and forth between the space in front of him and the clock on the dashboard.

"Dude, chill," she said, opening the door of the car and taking a seat behind the passengers' side. "She's coming…just grabbing her purse."

"Oh…" he laughed nervously. "Okay." He looked at the clock again. "Do you maybe want to go and see what's tak—?" The door opened once again and Del walked in casually. "Oh thank God," he sighed.

"To the mall!" Del exclaimed, sitting in front of Lori.

The rest of the drive was filled with heavy, awkward silence.

"Now," Del began as they pulled into the parking lot of the mall. "Have a nice day. Don't get into any trouble." The girls exited the car. "Have fun—but not too much fun!" She winked at her quickly reddening brother.

"Goodbye, Del," he said through gritted teeth.

Standing outside of Macy's, the girls watched as her brother's car drove out of the parking lot and down the road.

"Oh yeah," Del said, turning towards the doors of the store. "He is _so_ getting some today."

Lori trailed behind her, giggling wildly. "God, I love summer."

**I apologize for the break in the uploading pattern! I spend my summers at an intense theater 'program' (camp) and came home on me knees yesterday. But, I have it for you now! (Yay!)**

**For all of my devoted followers who are/were wondering about 'Il Divo' I ask you not to worry. That is my major project for the time being and wish not to rush any of it. I will hopefully be writing/uploading the next chapter sometime this weekend, hopefully by Saturday night. **

**You apologize for long reviews. Why? They are amazing. They are how I start my day. They are what carry me through eight hours of vocal warm ups and a crazy choreographer. I love them. And I love you for writing them. (Feelin creeped yet? No? Good.)**

**I ask—nay!—request—nay!—implore—nay!—BEG you to follow me on Tumblr. (www . zoey21q . tumblr . com) **

_**THANK YOU SO MUCH!**_


	7. Morning Bird, Night Owl

To live with a morning bird—as a night owl—is a difficult thing. After being up until three in the morning, being roused from sleep at seven-thirty a.m. by the sound of aforementioned bird _prancing_ down the halls, making breakfast—in a fashion much louder than necessary, or even doing what birds do best—sing their little, feathery hearts out—is never, ever a pleasant thing.

But it happened. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, as the sunlight filtered through her curtains, and her dog stirred at the foot of her bed, and she clutched the corner of her bedspread, and her sleepy little neighborhood shook awake, morning bird could be heard down the hall, flitting around the kitchen, pouring himself a bowl of cereal, and settling onto the couch—singing.

Oh how she loathed his singing in the morning…and Katy Perry in turn.

In a desperate attempt to block out the cheery sounds that seemed so out of place compared to the deep darkness of sleep she so longed for, she pulled out one of the many several pillows from underneath her head and pressed it over her ear.

Silence. Much better.

He continued to sing…_louder_…much, much louder.

Brother dearest, pumpkin, love, sweetie…? Go to hell.

Instinctively, she nudged her dog with her toe. The dog's head popped up, looking towards the pile of pillows at the headboard.

"Zoey…" she muttered, throwing an arm out from under her comforter and pointing a finger at her door, standing just barely ajar. "Shut him up." Then with a small click of her tongue, the dog jumped to the floor, pushed open the door with the tip of her nose, and scurried out of the room.

She heard claws on a hard wood floor, then on tile, and then the sound disappeared as she crossed onto the carpet of the living room.

"_Oh, hey, Zoey_!" she heard him say, and the singing stopped.

She had never before in her life loved her dog as much as she did right then.

"_C'mon, let's go get your mommy_!" She hard the plunk of ceramic bowl on wooden coffee table.

Oh, for the love of all things holy.

She rolled over onto her stomach, the pillow still on her head, and feigned sleep, trying to slow her breathing and fake a light snore.

Then she heard the hinges of her door creak. "," she muttered into her pillow.

"What was that?" her brother asked, aggravatingly chipper.

"I said," she huffed, raising herself onto her elbows and glaring at him. "Put down my dog and leave. Now."

He glared back, an eyebrow raised. He was an interesting sight in the morning, especially this morning. Despite being fully (and irritatingly) awake, he looked like he had just rolled out of bed: his hair was flattened against his head in some places, and stuck up in curly tufts elsewhere; his grey Harvard t-shirt was halfway tucked into his green plaid, flannel pants; and presently, he had a panting Shih Tzu dog under his arm.

"Well, why'd you let her out in the first place?"

"To stop your _incessant_ singing." She fell back onto her pillow, half of her face buried in fabric, the other half still staring him down.

"Well, that's not nice." He pat the dog's head protectively.

"Fine. Take my dog. Just get the hell out of my room." She closed her eyes tightly again.

"I thought you liked my singing."

"At reasonable hours. Now leave." A lazy hand poked out from the covers and waved in the general direction of her door.

"It still wasn't very nice." He took a step towards her bed.

"I thank you for returning my dog and will extend my most sincere apologies—_oof_!" He had taken a seat on the edge of her bed, squishing her up against the wall, and set the dog on her back.

"There you go."

"Thank you…" she grumbled, attempting to turn back over. "No go away."

"Fine." He stood up and stretched. "_Good mornin'_ _Good mornin'_!" he crooned, skipping towards the door. "_It's great to stay up late!" _He shot her a sarcastic glance. "_Good mornin', good mornin' to you_."

"Hey, Cosmo?" she hollered at the door, just as he swaggered out of sight. It only took him a moment to pop his head back in through the door, though.

"Aw, come on. I don't even get to be Don?"

"No. 'Cuz…you suck."

"Oh. Is that all?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah. Pretty much," she yawned.

"Well, that's not nice very either. You're just downright grumpy in the morning."

"_Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus..._" she recited lazily, as if it would explain everything. She raised a finger into the air, a twinge of condescension mingled with her solid conviction.

"Nerd," he giggled. "Sleepy, grumpy, nerd."

"You knew what it meant."

"Touchè," he said nodding.

"Ha. Now leave."

"Sleep tight." And he turned down the hallway, humming. "_I am so Gene Kelly..._" he muttered before falling back onto the couch and diving back into his now soggy cereal.

**Oh, so short. So so so so so so short! But I like it. It's cute. I adore Blaine in the morning. Every bit of him. ****Even from the 'I-hate-you-like-a-sister' point of view. I hope you liked it!**

**If you haven't gotten the point that I'm desperate for Tumblr followers... (www . zoey21q . tumblr . com)**


	8. Nightmares

**Intro/Author's Note/Welcome to my head-cannon****: In my mind, Blaine's dad is in the army. Don't ask me why, it just came to me. **_**That **_**is why he had him build the car with him—it was his attempt at 'manning him up' a little before his impending deployment. **

**Mom is the big-business type person, in contrast to what a lot of people may think. She works weekends sometimes, and is not exactly hovering over her children all the time. **

**Thus, protective Blaine. **

**In no way are Blaine and Del neglected, just very, very, very independent—except when it comes to each other. They need each other. **

**So, ENJOY!**

At three-thirty in the morning, on a Tuesday like any other, she was jolted awake by a hand on her shoulder and a small light in her face, the images of her most recent nightmare fresh in her mind.

"Del," her brother whispered. "Del, wake up!"

She was panting, and she could feel her heart pounding in her chest.

"Del," he repeated. "Del, it's okay…it's okay."

She leaned against her headboard, still shaking, clutching a pillow to her chest, fighting back tears, dazed to the world.

"What happened?" he asked quietly, tucking his still glowing phone into his pocket.

With a gasp she turned towards him, as if she was only realizing his presence then. "W-what…?"

"What's wrong, Del?" He took a seat on the edge of the bed next to her. "What happened?"

"…D-dad…" she stammered.

His sighed, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and hugging her close. "Don't worry. He's okay. You're okay. We're _all_ okay."

"B-but it wasn't just him this time…" she continued.

"What do you mean?"

"I…It wasn't just him. There were more people…in the helicopter. I…it's like I was watching it all happen…like a movie or something…" She buried her face in her pillow.

"Shhh, it's okay." He could think of nothing else to tell her.

Their dad had been deployed to Afghanistan sixteen months ago. Del and Blaine didn't know a whole lot about what he did there, just the fact that he flew helicopters.

In the beginning, Del had nightmares almost every other night, but after a while they had become farer and farer between. Lately, it seemed they had stopped.

But then nights like this would happen, and he would be reminded that the sarcastic and fiercely independent attitude Del had mastered was nothing but a façade.

From what he had been able to gather from her in the state of semi-awareness he found her in every time he woke her, whimpering, from one of her nightmares, the same thing happened every time, with variations thrown in here and there: their dad was in one of his helicopters, and it crashed.

She mumbled something into her pillow that he couldn't understand.

"What?"

Slowly, she lifter her head and looked him directly in the eyes. "You were there."

"Oh…_Del_…" he said almost pleadingly, rubbing her shoulder.

To have your room right across from your sibling's, and a long hallway away from your parents', is both a blessing and a curse. Simply to be born a big brother is both a blessing and a curse. To be the man of the house (despite what your mother says) is both a blessing and a curse.

"How long 'til he's back?" she whimpered into her pillow.

He pulled out his phone again, and flipped through a calendar. "Two-hundred and seven days."

"That's too long." The truth resounding in those three little words was astounding.

"Yeah."

"Blaine?" she asked weakly, still speaking down into her pillow.

"Hmm?"

"Are you going to join the army?"

"No. I don't think so."

"Did Dad want you to?"

"I think maybe a little bit."

She was silent for a minute.

"I miss him, too," he said. The words had just fallen out of his mouth without thinking about it.

People often told them that it was like they could read each other's minds. Of course they thought it was funny, but never really took it to heart. Sure, they understood each other's mannerisms and what certain expressions meant. Heck, they could probably have an entire silent conversation with just their eyebrows, but mind reading?

Tonight, right then and there, he believed it.

"Go back to sleep," she said drowsily, yawning.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, yes, yes…get off my bed."

He smiled a little and stood. If she was back to being bossy, she would be fine.

"G'night," he said and turned towards the door, hearing her slide back under her comforter and settle back to sleep.

Alone in his room a few minutes later, he lay in his bed staring at the ceiling. Truth be told, there were still nights when he was stirred from sleep—or worse, kept awake—by thoughts of the realities of life…but no one needed to know that.

Not Del…not anyone.

He heard his mother stir. He knew it was her; she was the only one in the house that snored.

She didn't need to know either.

He was the strong one now, and as much as his mom wanted to tell him otherwise, he knew he had to be…just for two-hundred and seven more days.

So he tried to clear his mind, and rolled over, thinking of things that were at least half-happy…

Del was fast asleep, calm again.

His mom was asleep too, blissfully unaware of anything that would have made Del anything but calm.

He only had two hundred and seven days left…

**Do you have a Tumblr? OMG SO DO I! And I follow back, just saying. (www . zoey21q . tumblr . com)**


	9. Regionals

She woke up uncharacteristically early that Saturday, traipsed down the stairs to the kitchen and proceeded to place a pan on the stove, preparing to make an omelet. Methodically, she pulled a plate out of the cupboard, grab two eggs, a bell pepper and a bag of grated cheese from the refrigerator, and set them all down next to the stove.

With practiced movements, she cracked the eggs into the pan, and followed them with a sprinkling of cheese and a handful of diced pepper.

Once it was cooked through, she slid it onto the plate and set it at the head of the kitchen table, next to a glass of orange juice. Then back up the stairs she went.

Carefully, she opened the door to her brother's room and peered in: he was laying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, eyes wide open.

She sighed. "Up and at 'em, Starshine!" She clapped a few times. "It's Regionals day!"

"I can't do this," he moaned.

She sighed again. "Yes, you can."

"No, I can't," he sputtered.

"Yes, you can. Now get up, I made breakfast."

"I-I can't do it. I can't even think of my own name right now." He never blinked, staring at the ceiling still.

Unfortunately, she knew exactly how to deal with this.

"Your name is Blaine," she said reassuringly. "You are a…what? What are you?"

"I am a Warbler…?" he asked, still staring into space.

"Very good, Blaine the Warbler, now what are you singing?"

He sat up and looked at her, still half dazed. It was apparent he had gotten no sleep the night before. "_Raise Your Glass_," he said with a little more confidence, blinking a few times.

"Fantastic! What else?"

"Uh…" he actually seemed stumped for a moment. Soon though, his eyes became distant and dreamy, and he answered softly, "_Candles_…with Kurt."

"Absolutely!" she cheered, throwing her hands up. "Now," she pointed down the hall. "Go become conscious!"

Taking his marching orders without protest, he shuffled out of his room and down the stairs to the kitchen. Just as she was about to do the same, she heard a familiar noise.

Blaine's phone was buzzing on his bedside table.

_Ah, Kurt,_ she thought. _Long time, no text_.

She picked up the phone and read the short message: _Regionals! You pumped? I'm pumped! Love you! 3 –K_

Hmm, Kurt never struck her as a 'pumped' person before. Guess you learn something new every day.

She contemplated a reply, before a better idea hit her.

Sneaking down the stairs, she silenced his phone and stuck it around the corner, snapping a quick photo of her brother hunched over his plate of eggs.

_So pumped it's not even funny, dude. –Del _she typed quickly, following the photo.

A second later, there was a reply: _Oh…my. He's going to kill you.-K_

_ Not if you don't tell._ She scrawled.

_U r an evil, evil child.-K _

She laughed.

Then the phone actually rang.

Crap.

She bolted down the hall into her room and answered it quickly.

"Hello there, Mr. Brother's-pumped-duet-partner-guy!"

"Hi, Del. You know, it would really be a nice change of pace to actually get Blaine when I call his phone," he said flatly.

"Oh, come now! It's been weeks!" she retorted.

"Tuesday, Del. You replied to one of my texts last Tuesday."

"Fine. Gimme a second." She marched begrudgingly down the stairs, phone in hand, only to find Blaine with his head thrown back, chugging his glass of orange juice. "For you!" She turned on the speaker and slid the phone across the table.

Blaine choked on his juice when he heard the phone hit the wood of the table, and practically drowned in it when Kurt gave a short, "Morning!"

~x~

Half an hour later, Blaine was straightening his tie, poised in front of the door, obviously biding his time.

"Go! You're going to miss the bus there!"

"Not exactly the greatest motivation," he said cockily, jingling a set of keys off of his finger.

"Whatever. Just go!"

"Fine." He took a deep breath and reached for the handle of the door. "Thanks, Del."

"GO!" She gave him a nudge. "GO! WIN! CRUSH!"

And out the door he went, ready to win Regionals.

**Okay, so here's the deal. I have a lot of little ideas for things floating around in my head, but when they get put to 'paper' they're only like 500 words long. Would you, my devoted readers, be all right with little scenes that are only 500 words long, or would you prefer that I only post substantial (1000+ words) stories?**

**It's all up to. **


	10. Portrait

**I warned you they were short. This is based completely off my own experiences with my brother…with a little Glee/Darren inside jokes smattered around…enjoy! **

"For crying out loud, sit still!" she sighed, flipping her pencil around once again, to fix a less-than-perfect line.

For the past forty minutes, Blaine had been perched on a stool, staring off into space, trying to sit up straight as Del penciled his portrait. Twenty minutes ago, he had started to get fidgety.

"I'm trying to sit still," he said through his teeth, trying to move his mouth too much in the process. "But I have a mosquito bite on the back of my knee and it _itches_!"

"I don't care! You should have taken that into consideration before you volunteered."

"Volunteered my—!"

"DON'T MOVE!"

Instantly, he snapped back into place, keeping his eyes forward.

"Hey," he whispered.

"What?" she grumbled, erasing some more.

"There's a bug on that wall over there."

Reflexively, her head dropped into her hands, shaking with exasperation. The corners of her brother's mouth twitched.

"What?" she huffed.

"…facepalm," he muttered, trying—and failing—to hold back a grin.

"You really do have the attention span of a four year old, don't you?"

Once again, he shook with the laugh he was holding in.

"Poker face, dude, poker face…"

With a deep breath, he smoothed his face again, and looked forward. There was another few minutes of quiet stillness, Del scrawling away, and Blaine trying to remain as composed as possible.

"Only your artsy-fartsy summer _program_ would have homework," Blaine muttered.

"It's not homework, it's practice! No different than you running up the hot water bill every time you have a competition thanks to your shower concerts."

"Hey—!"

"DON'T MOVE!"

"Jeeze… Fine. 'Practice' it is. Are you almost done?" He sighed again.

"Almost…lift your chin a little bit…"

He obeyed, with only the slightest of eye-rolls.

"Just one last thing…" she giggled a little bit.

"What?"

"You,"—another snort—"your…" she trailed off, keeping her eyes glued to the paper and off her squirming brother.

"What's so funny about my face?" He glared at her through the corner of his eye, not daring to move now.

"It's just—it's nothing really—it's just, sitting here, having to look at them…" Her sentence was once drowned out in giggles again.

"Dude, not cool…what's so freakin' funny?"

"Um…your eyebrows…um…don't exactly—gah, how should I put this…?"

"Just tell me!"

"Your eyebrows don't exactly fit the guidelines…they're just a little bit…"

He sighed heavily, his face suddenly becoming stony and unamused. "I know. Just draw. I want to get this over with…"

"Thank you for not making me say it," Del laughed once more, and turned back to her paper.

By the time she was done, almost fifteen minutes later, the carpet around her chair in the middle of the living room was sprinkled with eraser remains, her pencil was mutilated from inpatient chewing, and Blaine's back was uncomfortable stiff.

"There!" she sighed, brimming with pride. "I give you, 'Blaine Anderson'."

She turned the paper around as Blaine jumped off the stool, bending backwards, producing an unsettling pop from his spine.

"Um…okay then. Here we are!" She waved the sketch pad in his face for a second.

"Uh…wow…" He was squinting at the paper, tilting his head to the side and back, testing different angles. "Do I really look that…uh…"

"What? Oh, God it's awful isn't it? Oh, God!" She flipped the paper back and scrutinized it, her eyes darting between the picture and the real thing.

"No! It's great! But…do I really look that much like Elvis?"

She looked back at the drawing, a near-perfect profile of her brother, and smiled.

"Yes, actually, you do."

He smiled giddily, raising the corner of his lip and popping his hips to one side awkwardly. "Why, thank you…thank you very much," he mumbled huskily.

She hit him over the head with her sketch pad and made her way back to her room.

**OH SO FREAKIN SHORT! It almost hurts. **


	11. Golden Opportunity

**Author's Note: Kurt Hummel. **

Mom was on a business trip.

Sitting alone in her room, a black beanie covering her frizzy hair, hunching over her laptop, in complete darkness and deafening silence—after eleven o'clock at night—was not Del's favorite thing to do.

Especially when Blaine was out with Kurt.

Again.

Leaned up against her bedside table was an old wooden baseball bat, and sitting next to her alarm clock was a can of Axe body spray. Sure it wasn't pepper-spray, but she bet it would hurt if it got in someone's eyes.

Praying not to have to find out tonight, she clicked away, checking email, scrolling through Tumblr, checking Facebook, and gravitating back towards her email.

At eleven twenty, she heard the distant, but distinct sound of a large vehicle pulling into the driveway, coming to a halt on slightly screechy breaks, and turning off.

There was a moment where her heart pounded in her ears thinking, _'That is not the Nissan!' _before she remembered: Kurt had driven.

She relaxed at that thought, giddiness replacing the anxiety: she hadn't heard any car door open yet.

Smiling slyly to herself, she turned back to the email she was writing to her friend, editing it from a self-pitying drone about being lonely, to a down-right suggestive little description of the events unfolding presently.

There was the slam of one car door, then the other.

She held her breath, waiting for any more noise. None came. Not the sound of the front door opening either.

Once again, bubbly giggles escaped her. She closed the email with a coy, 'to be continued' and sent it hastily, closing her laptop.

Deciding that she would look far less suspicious—and much more…vulnerable, shall we say?—if she was wielding the baseball bat when she stormed the living room, she grabbed it by the base and swung it over her shoulder as she exited her room.

Halfway down the hall, about ten feet from the stairs that lead right down into the living room, and directly in front of the front door, she brought herself to a screeching halt.

She had heard the door open.

It was a soft sound: metal scraping lightly on wood, followed by a light creak, then a soft thump as the door closed.

This all happened rather slowly. Too slowly. Like, awkwardly slowly…

She took another cautious step, pulled her hat up from over her ears, and held her breath again, listening for anymore noise. At the sound of her brother's voice, her heart raced: he was talking to someone.

"Hmm, don't even worry about it," he laughed quietly. "As far as I know, she hasn't slept since Monday." His voice was breathy, but not quite a whisper. "When we left, she had been running on nothing but the caffeine from Diet Coke for the past forty hours…" He took another pause. "Not even Miss Energizer Bunny can go for that long without sleep. I should know…I've lived through seeing her try…" He laughed again, but this time, it wasn't just him.

There were definitely two people in the living room.

Between the haze of shock and utter excitement, Del found herself only slightly insulted.

"This would happen to be hour forty-five without sleep, thank you very much," she breathed to herself.

Tightening her grip on the baseball bat over her shoulder—for reasons she couldn't explain—she crept closer to the stairs and craned her neck to see around the corner into her living room.

She caught a flicker of a black sleeve before it flickered out of view.

Damn, what was Blaine wearing tonight?

Black?

"You better be right," a familiar voice chimed, giggling lightly, the tone somewhere between accusing and…alluring?

She felt herself flush as she bit back a smile, clutching the baseball bat tighter. This time, though, her hands were folded under her chin, and it was only due to her ninja-like reflexes that the bat didn't hit the wall next to her.

Because that would have sucked.

"Trust me," her brother said quietly, again. "I know some things…Del is one of those things…"

The unmistakable sound of someone sitting on the couch rang through the quiet house like a crashing plate. Then another.

So she wanted to meet Kurt. She wanted to meet Kurt really, really, really, really badly. But this way? Interrupting what could _very_ well be a _very _romantic moment? Where did she draw the line?

When it took her every bit of self control within her to hold back a giggle at the sound of something like _one hell of a kiss_, she decided that now was not the time.

Despite everything she had said and done over the past few months, she knew that nowhere in her did she have the gumption to ruin a moment like this for her brother.

She sighed heavily, unthinking, and all noise form downstairs stopped.

In a moment of panic, she darted towards her room, and closed the door, dropping the bat on floor behind her, making the loudest noise imaginable at that moment in time.

Minute later, as she kneeled on the floor, her ear pressed to her door, she hear two sets of feet and that oh so familiar voice once again.

"A…baseball bat?" Kurt asked.

"I've got to give it to her," Blaine said, bending down to pick it up. "A human can live on caffeine and Fritos alone."

"At leas she had the decency to let us—" Kurt began, before being cut off.

"I wouldn't be so sure," Blaine said skeptically, before the creek of the stairs and the sound of a door opening and closing let Del know that once again, she had missed a golden opportunity.

A heavy sigh and the sound of someone plopping heavily onto the couch made her think that Blaine had too…

Oh well…If tonight was any inclination, that was certainly not the last _escapade_ Kurt would have at the Anderson home.

**I'm so mean. I am a tease and I get people excited for no reason and I'm mean. I apologize.**

**P.S. Del is certainly a better person than I.**


	12. A Harry Potter Moment

**The dedication of this chapter is split twenty-two ways…**

**To some of the greatest people I know: my friends at my summer camp who made last summer the best time of my life—and got me to read Harry Potter, years late.**

**You probably won't read this, guys, but it goes to you. **

It was six o'clock at night on July seventh, 2011. She sat on her couch, chewing her nails nervously, her brother beside her. His computer sat on his lap, and he worked quickly on it, scrolling, clicking and typing furiously. She held his 'emergency' credit card in her hands, fiddling with it impatiently, ready to ramble off the number the second her brother asked.

This was the moment of truth.

"Number," he said, never taking his eyes off the screen.

She rattled them off, one after another, keeping a steady pattern. When she reached the end, she held her breath, waiting to hear the verdict.

He gasped. "P-purchase successful," he whispered.

"That means—" she began to say, before being cut off by her brother's screams.

"WE GOT THE TICKETS!" he hollered, jumping to his feet, then onto the couch, and throwing his arms into the air. "WE'RE GOING TO THE MIDNIGHT RELEASE!"

Soon she stood too, jumping up and down with her brother.

"WE'RE GOING TO THE MIDNIGHT RELESE!" she echoed, a high of excitement rushing through her. This was the fourth theater they had tried; all the other's had already been sold out.

She had never been to a midnight release of anything before.

Not a movie.

Not a book.

Not a DVD.

Nothing.

And now she was going to be at the midnight release of the final Harry Potter movie…

Her brother cheered again.

…and she was going with the biggest fan she knew.

It was almost surreal. She had been a late start with reading the books, but had fallen into them at the request of her brother, after many years of pleading and prying.

Now she regrets never listening to him…or anyone else for that matter.

Lori had certainly never been a big fan of…any books really, and the rest of her friends just weren't very energetic about much at all. Blaine on the other hand…

"…MID-NIGHT RE-LEASE, MID-NIGHT RE-LEASE…!" he chanted, jumping off the couch and marching up to his room, coming back down clad in a Gryffindor House scarf, a large stuffed snowy owl under his arm.

"Catch!" he called, tossing the owl into the air and pulling a wand out of his pocket.

She caught the toy laughing, and watched her brother prance around the living room.

"You are such a dweeb!" she snickered.

He came to a screeching halt, sneering at her. "Muggle," he said scathingly.

She gasped dramatically. "I resent that!"

"Then be less stiff!"

After a second of thought, she ran up to her room too, the owl under her arm, and emerged at the top of the stairs, a pointy black hat on her head, also wielding a wand.

"HEY, POTTER!" she hollered, tossing the owl back at him.

He looked up just in time to get hit in the face with the flying toy. "…Granger?" he asked, picking up the bird endearingly from the floor.

"Granger," she said affirmatively, racing down the stairs.

**~x~**

She walked into her home at nine o'clock that night, tired from a late-run business meeting, expecting the same as usual: her son in the living room reading or watching his music or playing his guitar, and his daughter up in her room on her laptop.

Instead, when she came through the door, she was met with the sight of her two children, sitting hip to hip on the living room couch, both clutching wands, draped in gold and red, bent over her son's computer, watching a movie and sniffing back tears.

"…_I want to burry him. Properly, without magic_…" an accented voice said from the computer, before fading into a hauntingly familiar tune.

She tried to slide into the kitchen unnoticed, not wanting to disrupt them. A small whimper came from the couch though, stopping her in her tracks. She turned around and took a step towards the sound, _expecting_ to find her daughter in tears, preparing herself to comfort her on a subject she knew little about.

She was not, however, expecting what she _did_ find.

"D-d-dobby…" Blaine squeaked, leaning his head on Del's shoulder, his cheeks streaked with tears, a hand over his trembling chin.

Del had her arm around his shoulder, rubbing it fiercely, still sniffling herself. "It's okay…he saved Harry…that's all he ever wanted to do…he died fulfilling his life's wish…" She shushed.

"I know…" he mumbled his voice gruff. "…it's just…" The last part of the sentence was strangled in a quivering sigh.

Just then, Del's eyes shot away from the screen for a moment, catching sight of her mother. "Hi," she said quietly. "Could we…uh…have a minute?"

With a knowing nod, she slipped up the stairs, leaving her children alone with their childhoods.

**I hope I didn't disappoint all true fans with reactions. Del is a perfect representation of me: late to the fandom with unwilling friends.**

**Unfortunately I have no Blaine to urge me into it. I have all of my camp friends to thank for that.**


	13. I See A Lot of Myself

_"I WISH OUR HEARTS COULD COME TOGETHER AS ONE! 'CAUSE SHORTY IS A EENIE, MEENIE, MINEY, MO LOVA…!"_

If there was one thing she was not expecting to hear when she returned home that afternoon from summer camp, was Justin Beiber blaring loud and proud from upstairs.

She would admit, her brother had an interesting taste in music, but never in a million years would she ever think he would ever openly listen to Beiber.

Certainly not at that volume.

"BLAINE?" she hollered, tossing her bag full of papers onto the couch and heading up the stairs.

"_…oh, pause it there, dude_." And then Blaine came running down from his room a giddy grin across his face. "Okay, you know the Smiths from down the street right?" he asked jumping the last few steps and landing dangerously close to Del's toes.

"…Yeah…?"

"Well, remember when I used to baby-sit their son, Theo, when he was little?" By this point he was actually hopping with excitement.

"Yeah…?"

"Well, Theo is eleven now and—!" he began to explain before being cut off.

"HEY DEL!" A small boy stood at the top of the stairs, an iPod in his hand, smiling widely. His hair was dirty blonde and his clothes!—it looked like he had sprung right out of a Ralph Lauren Polo advertisement: Leather flip-flops, white boating shorts, and an ivy green sweater over a pink and white checkered, button up collared shirt.

In a word, he was adorable.

"Hey, Theo!" taking the steps two at a time, he ran down and hugged her. "Lookin' sharp, man!"

"Thanks," he said, smiling even wider.

"But, aren't you a little hot in that?" She had just noticed the hum of the air conditioning…and the fact that her brother was in just shorts and a t-shirt…and the fact that she was in just shorts and a t-shirt…and the fact that it was just really, really hot.

He looked at her like she had insulted him, then with a straight face, in the most matter-of-factly tone, he turned to her and said, "Fashion hurts."

She just gaped at him.

"Yeah, but fashion advice is so not why he's here," Blaine interjected.

"Yeah! I was asking Blaine if I was good enough to be a Warbler some day."

"You sing?"

He nodded quickly, before continuing to talk at an amazing pace. "I really do love to sing, and I guess I'm okay, but that's not it. I've seen your mom's home videos of the Warblers and I noticed that they actually do dance…sorta."

Blaine nodded, practically beaming.

"I dance, too!" Theo said energetically.

She was taken back for a second, shaking her head unbelievingly. "You what?"

"I dance!" he repeated, flashing his blindingly white smile once again.

"Go get your music," Blaine told him with a light nudge to his back. As Theo darted up the stairs, Blaine turned back to Del, his face dropping. "He's amazing, he really is…but his parents aren't exactly into the whole…_performing arts_ thing."

"Oh…well…um…"

"Yeah…he said I was the first person he's ever performed in front of." Blaine sighed. "It killed me."

A few seconds later, Theo appeared at the top of the stairs, Blaine's iHome under his arm, the chord flung over his shoulder.

"Ah! I knew Blaine wasn't the one listening to Beiber." Del crossed her arms as Theo directed them towards the open space of the living room.

"I wouldn't be so sure, Del," Theo began as he plugged the speakers in. "I know for a fact that he's got at least two—"

"Alright!" Blaine cut him off, forcing a smile and clapped a hand firmly on his shoulder. "Let's show Del what we've been working on."

"We?" Del asked skeptically as she and Blaine took a seat on the couch.

"Okay, him. But I've given him some constructive criticism."

"_Pfft,_" came a huff of air from Theo. "You told me to roll up my sleeves when I dance. That's the extent of anything even _close_ to constructive."

"Fine. I pretty much just sat there consumed with jealousy. Happy?" Blaine crossed his arms and smirked.

"Very." And Theo started the music.

Five seconds in and it already felt like she had front row tickets to _So You Think You Can Dance_ or something. He was fantastic.

But more then just the moves, there was a heart and soul to his dancing. His eyes were closed half the time, and he mouthed the lyrics as he went along. Never did he seem strained; it was like he'd been doing it his entire life…like it just came naturally.

When it was over, he took his bows in front of his two-person cheering squad, smiling again.

"Theo, that was…incredible! You should do something with that!"

"Oh," he said, getting a bit flustered, hemming and hawing and looking down. "I don't know, I couldn't—" But he was cut off when he pocket buzzed. "Oh! That's probably my mom. Thanks, Blaine. Bye Del!" And with a firm handshake and a tight hug respectively, he dashed out the door, jogging up the street.

Del and Blaine just sat there.

"You could…I don't know…mentor him?" Del offered.

"He doesn't need a teacher; he knows what he's doing," Blaine said gravely. "He just doesn't have anyone to tell him how great he is."

"Well, you could do that too, you know."

There was a pause.

"He reminds me of myself a little," Blaine said quietly.

"He does?" Del was a little confused.

"Yeah. I mean, look at him! He's got a passion…but he's held back by something."

"You were never held back!" Del protested. "You had Mom wrapped around your finger! You did whatever you wanted."

"With Mom maybe but…do you know how many sports tryouts I fudged on purpose in front of Dad?"

"Yeah…he dragged me along to half, remember?" She smirked at him. "I kicked your ass half the time."

"But you get it, right? At least I—_we_ had Mom to back me up and take us to shows and stuff"—he elbowed Del playfully—"I just want Theo to know he's got something good…and not to mess it up trying to hide it." He smiled fondly. "I can see him as a Warbler someday. You didn't even hear him sing," he snickered. "He's got a gift."

She smiled. "Well, you and me will sit here and marvel at his talent as much as he wants, right?"

"Absolutely."

She stood up, stretching. "Oh, Theo," she yawned.

"My thoughts exactly."

**The character of Theo—and the whole clothes conversation, outfit and dance thing—is based completely off of the little brother of one of my camp friends. He's incredible. I hope this story does him justice.**

**Depending on the reception I get, Theo may or may not be coming back. **

**I hope you liked it!**

**And, since I haven't asked in the last two or three chapters… (www . zoey21q . tumblr . com)**


	14. Dinner

"Um, Mom?" Blaine began hesitantly, setting his fork down.

"Hmm?" She looked up from across the table.

"Could…uh…could," he coughed awkwardly and took a sip of his water. "Would it be…" He hemmed and hawed a little more. "Are you planning on being home for dinner this Friday?"

"I think so. I don't have any meetings that night. Why do you ask?" She tilted her head and tried to figure his expression.

"Well, I was wondering if…" He coughed again. "If we could have Kurt over for dinner? For you to meet him."

Del, who had been listening absentmindedly to the conversation, choked on her mashed potatoes.

"Well…" their mother began.

Del glared at her, trying to gauge what she was thinking. _Say yes_, she thought hard. _SAY YES!_

Blaine looked reserved and mildly apprehensive.

"Well I don't see why not." The statement was casual and airy, completely devoid of the tension Blaine—and Del—were feeling.

Del let out a light, "_yes!_" and Blaine just smiled with relief and satisfaction.

Their mom actually laughed a little. "Goodness, guys. You look so shocked! Did you actually think I'd say no? I hear enough about this guy; I'd like to meet him."

Whether or not she was just trying to be the 'cool mom' or not was unclear. Her expression read somewhere between 'whatever dudes…' and 'give me a break.'

"I just wasn't sure…" Blaine trailed off, looking up at his mom.

"Honey, you have to understand that as long as whoever you're dating is nice and pleasant and a respectable young person, I really don't care too much." She took a bit of her chicken and thought for a second. "Strike that," she swallowed. "I would very much prefer if they got good grades." There was another moment of contemplation. "And I don't want to be picky but it would be really nice if they could cook, too. I need to know that you're not going to waste away to nothing with all of your independence and stuff."

"I…I…" Blaine stuttered.

"But other than that, it really only matters that you're happy." She took a long drink of water from her glass. "Pass the salad, Del."

But Del was frozen too. She was finally going to meet 'the boyfriend.' The only down part was that she would be under the vigilance of her mother. Didn't that just put a damper on all of her plans?

"Del?" her mother asked again.

"Oh!" And she handed her the salad bowl.

"So, Friday night." She set the bowl back down on the table and whipped her BlackBerry out from her pocket. "Is six thirty good?"

"Um…I'm sure six thirty is great." Blaine blinked a few times, finally coming around.

"Excellent." She stowed the device away and smiled. "So, Del. Are there any boys at your camp that I'll be meeting any time soon…?"

And dinner went on. It's amazing how the lack of a reaction can take someone aback just as much as blowing up in someone's face can be. The rest of dinner wasn't awkward or strained or tense at all—much to Blaine's surprise and Del's relief.

To their mom's credit, she had never made a big deal out of much, not their grades, not who they dated, not what they liked to do. She was easygoing…and the complete opposite of their dad.

Blaine could only imagine how differently things could have gone if it was their father at the end of the table that evening instead. But truth be told, he didn't _want to_ imagine it.

"So," Del said after dinner as they sat on the couch in front of the television. "That went well."

"Yeah," Blaine said.

"So," she yawned. "You're going to let us meet him."

"Yeah."

"And you're not afraid that I'm gonna scare him away or something?" She raised and eyebrow and looked over at him on the opposite side of the couch.

"Are you kidding? I'm terrified." He took a deep breath. "But I just feel awful whenever I'm at his house, talking to his dad and Finn, knowing that there is a whole part of me that he doesn't know."

"…I kinda want to meet Finn now…" Del thought aloud to herself.

"My point being that I love him and I love you and it's not fair to either of you to keep you separate. And if he can't handle you crazy people," he snickered. "Then…we'll elope."

There was a momentary flash of panic across Del's face, before she broke into an annoyed grin. "Jerk. I thought you were serious for a second!" She hit him with a pillow.

"Nah!" He laughed again. "You'll love each other. I know it."

She smiled giddily.

A minute later, their mom sat down between them, answering the Jeopardy question.

"At least it's educational," she said as it cut to commercial. "It could be America's Funniest Home Videos or something."

There was silence. Everyone was tired.

"By the way, Mom," Blaine said, smirking a little.

"Yeah?"

"He's on the honor roll and an amazing cook."

"Well," she sighed contently. "I guess that's all I could ask for."

**I've wanted to write something like this for the longest time. I love to think that their mom is really chill and nonchalant. I have in my head this whole scene of Blaine coming out to his parents and his dad being all awkward and tense and his mom just kind of being all, "oh, that's cool."**

**I just think it's a new perspective and I can't wait to write that dinner scene!**

**FYI, readers: the majority of these stories will take place during the summer until the show comes back (THE HIATUS IS KILLING ME SLOWLY) and I have canon stuff to work with. Any and all ideas/prompts/head-canon scenes anyone would like to see are not only welcomed but encouraged! Please!**

**And finally, I made this kind of bad-ish Paint creation of Del and Blaine. It can be found by adding the following ( post/7445279476/it-would-mean-the-world-to-me-if-you-went-here ) to my Tumblr address. **

**THANK YOU SO MUCH!**


	15. Opressor

**I would like to take you back to *Insert Episode Title Here* where Blaine, Kurt and Mercedes were just sitting in Breadsticks and Mercedes was totally zoning and—oop! Kurt just opens his mouth and out falls a little purse.**

**Now, put me in Kurt's place and turn that purse into an OC. **

**Welcome to my writing life. I just open my word document and out pops an OC. It is both liberating and annoying as hell because this is FanFiction and not a place for me to write my own stories simply hiding them behind the screen that is television. (…but then I think **_**Dalton**_**…)**

**If the OC's are bothering anyone, please feel free to tell me. I promise to make the next few chapters Blaine—and Klaine—centric. **

**And with that, I introduce a new character!**

**(…yay?)**

"Who do you think you are?" Del spat, clutching her bag to her chest and backing away from the two tall figures inching closer to her.

"That's none of your business, girly," one said in a deep but thin voice, stepping towards her again. "All we know is that you're one of those prissies from that artsy farts camp down the street." He cracked his knuckles. "We don't like you artsy fartsies."

Her friends had called her that before, but it was always a joke. The way the monster of a boy said it, dripping with an unexplained hate, made her skin crawl.

The sound of a hard swallow came from next to her, and she was suddenly aware of her friend Harvey next to her, also gripping a large sketchbook to his body like a life raft.

After camp each day, in an ages old art school, a few people would go to a coffee shop down the street, today was no different…other than the fact it was only Del and Harvey…and they were joined by outsiders this afternoon.

"L-leave us alone," Harvey mumbled, shaking a little as he looked up at the face of one of the boys. "W-we didn't do anything t-to you."

Harvey was small, very small, and this act of defiance only made their oppressors laugh.

Suddenly, one lunged for Del's bag. Stupidly, she fought back. In an instant, a hand hit her shoulder and her back hit the wall of the alley behind her.

An alley. It was raining, so she had stood in the alley between two buildings while she drank her iced coffee. It was raining and it was just her and little, soft-spoken Harvey and two guys that seemed vaguely familiar in a way that terrified her to her core.

"_Del_!" Harvey gasped, putting a hand on her shoulder as she winced.

"Give. That. Back," she said through gritted teeth, looking up from where she stood hunched over in pain.

"Make me," the hooded behemoth snarled.

Del made to go at him, but Harvey—with surprising strength—held her back as she watched her bag get turned upside down, the contents spilling onto the pavement. A collection of sticky notes and a couple pencils immediately hit the soggy ground, followed by a composition pad, a script, and a large, thick sketchbook.

The one that had been looming over Harvey looked down at it and smiled evilly. As he bent down and reached for it, the two pressed up against the wall screamed almost simultaneously, "DON'T TOUCH THAT!"

And with unnecessary roughness, he grabbed it by the corner of the cover and flung it into the air, catching it by a leaf of paper, inches above a puddle on the ground.

The sharp ripping sound very well could have been her hear.

Harvey's ears turned red, and he stood up straighter, setting his own book down unnoticed behind Del. "Put that down," he commanded, his voice lacking the necessary bravado to make it effective.

Instead, he tossed it to his friend, who proceeded to open it up and flip through the pages. He laughed. "So this is really what you do all day?" He scrutinized a page very closely. "Sit and doodle?" His eyes darted to the script on the ground at his feet. "And read plays?"

"It's called art!" she spat, her momentary spark of courage extinguished with a single step in her direction from the other boy.

"D-Del," Harvey whispered out of the corner of his mouth, leaning in so close to her ear that she could feel his breath on her cheek. "W-where's your brother?"

"He should be here s—" But she was cut of by the booming voice of the boy with her book.

"It's all fruit and bowls and"—he spat a curse—"You really are a bunch of dumb asses up there." He turned another page, a sneer still plastered across his face, and came to a halt. "Well, well, well…look what we got here!"

Craning her neck a bit she saw the picture the boys were looking at: the portrait she had done of Blaine just a week ago was open, getting drizzled on by the rain and _touched_—she cringed to think about it—by two hooded monsters.

Then a wave of memories hit her.

The boys were familiar for a reason. Two years ago, Blaine had come home from school screaming, and did so for an hour as Del looked on, horrified. When he had finally settled down, she emerged from around the hall to ask him what was wrong. With sharp movements he grabbed his yearbook—the last one from public school—and flung it open on the coffee table in the living room, pointing out two hulking boys from his class, before slamming it closed again and breaking down almost completely. He sobbed for another good fifteen minutes about the absolute torture he endured at school, snarling sometimes incoherent sentences containing nothing but swears and the names of the two boys he had singled out to her.

The names of the two boys that now loomed over Del and Harvey and her notebook. The two boys that now scowled over a picture of the very same person that they had tortured out of his school, away from his friends.

"…Anderson never mentioned he had a sister." One sneered grimly over the book at Del and Harvey. "But look who just happens to be here!"

"Look, we don't want any trouble," Harvey said, grabbing Del's wrists for support. Whether he was giving it to her, or the other way around, was unknown. "So please, just give that back to my friend."

A blue Nissan came around the corner. Del gasped. "That's—!" Del began, grabbing for her book, but Harvey cut her off.

"That's my dad!" he said quickly. "He's a cop. You better go. He keeps a taser on him at all times, even when he's not on duty!"

Del looked at him. She knew for a fact that his dad was a dentist.

The two larger boys glanced at each other, exchanging looks that made Del think they didn't really believe Harvey, but weren't willing to chance it. They dropped the book into a puddle and ran out the other side of the alley, away from the street with the car now parking a few feet up the road.

Del slid down the wall to sit on the ground, frozen.

Harvey, on the other hand, took a step away from the wall and grabbed the wet book. He sat next to Del and held the book out to her. "Do you mind if I open it?"

She shook her head.

"Thanks." And he proceeded to flip through the pages, dabbing at them with the hem of his t-shirt, trying to the best of his abilities to dry them off. He winced when he came to a pencil drawing of a flower, ripped almost perfectly in half. "Let that dry," he said gingerly. "Tape it from the back or laminate it. No one will ever know."

"Del?" they heard Blaine call. Immediately the two jumped to their feet darting around the corner, Harvey grabbing his book from behind Del and her script from in front of him as he stood. Blaine noticed the looks in their eyes. "What's wrong?"

Del wanted to scream about what had just happened. She wanted to call the police and get the monsters arrested and make them buy her a new sketchpad and a new, drier t-shirt for Harvey. But she couldn't. Because she knew that Blaine would not send the police after them, he would try to go himself.

"Harvey and I were just…talking. And I slipped and fell and dropped by bag and now he's helping me dry my books." She paused trying to judge the looks on the faces of her friend and brother. "Can we…can we give him a ride home?"

It was a small gesture, nowhere near enough to say thank you for what he had done (starting with holding her back—she would have been in much worse condition now if she had tried to attack—and ending with simply getting her book from the water) but it was something.

"Yeah. Of course. C'mon guys, it's raining." And he shuffled them into the car. Harvey sat in the back seat, twiddling his thumbs most of the ride, or checking that his own book wasn't damaged.

"Here," he said as they stepped out of the car into Harvey's driveway. He handed her his book. "You let me see yours. It's only fair—if you want to, that is…" he hemmed and hawed as they made their way up the steps toward his front door. "You can see mine if you want. I know how protective you are of that book, and it was terrible to see how…" He struggled for the word. "…_violated_ you were when those guys took it." He sighed. "And then I ended up seeing it too. I felt like I took advantage of the situation. Just…if it would make you feel better, you can…" he trailed off, offering the book once again.

They stood unusually close under the awning above his front door, the rain pouring down around them. She could smell coffee, and thought for a second that ti must have been him.

"Thanks, Harvey," Del said. "But I don't need to. I don't care what you saw. Just…thanks. I'll see you tomorrow." And she jogged down the steps to her brother's car.

"What was that?" Blaine asked as she closed the passenger door.

"Nothing. He's a good friend. He's…helpful."

"I see." His gaze remained forward, unmoving, unreadable. "So…how did auditions go?"

"I got the part," she giggled.

"I see. And that part would be…?"

"Marian." She pulled out her phone and began to compose a text.

"I see." He swallowed hard. "And…the play would be?" he asked apologetically.

She sighed. "The Music Man."

"Oh! Hey! That's the lead! Great job!" He smiled widely looking back and forth from the rode to his sister, his expression dripping with 'please-don't-hate-me.'

"Thanks," she said flatly. "Harvey got Harold."

Blaine was just kind of quiet.

"The male lead," she sighed.

"Give me a break. There's this little list of musicals I know nothing about, and The Music Man happens to be one of them." He was silent again, before a look of shocked understanding spread across his face. "Does that mean that you and Harvey have to—?"

"Yes. But shut up about it. I don't want Mom to have a bird. It's just a stage kiss." She shuffled through her bag. "Director's working on cutting it anyway," she said under her breath.

Blaine smiled. "He seems nice."

"You have no idea."

**Thoughts on a love life for Del?** **Review. Please. I got one review on the last chapter that I thought was emotional and almost controversial in a way. I like reviews. Long reviews. They make me so so so happy**!


	16. The Flirt

**"**_**There! Right there! Look at that tan, well tinted skin! Look at the killer shape he's in! Look at that slightly stubbly chin! Oh please, he's gay, totally gay!**_**" –("There, Right There," Legally Blonde the Musical)**

Though she was hesitant about going to the coffee shop after the events of the week previous, Del went nonetheless, mostly to humor Harvey who seemed to only talk to her. So they sat on the sidewalk with just five other people, chattering lightly about everything and nothing.

"So, Del," one of the other girls from camp began, taking a sip of her coffee. "You take photo's right?"

Del nodded.

"Do you have any on your phone?"

Del nodded.

"That's awesome, could I see?"

Del nodded.

Even though her new acquaintance almost emanated 'cooler-than-you' and everything about her seemed fake, Del unlocked her phone and handed it across the table.

Harvey just looked at her aghast.

"Wow…nice…pretty…" the girl—Becca?—mumbled as she flipped through her photos. "These are really, really—well _hello_ there."

"What?" Del craned her neck to see the phone.

"Who," Becca turned the screen around. "Is _that?_"

"Oh," Del laughed. "That's Blaine, my brother. I guess you've reached the last of my real photos so if I could just…" She reached a hand across the circle of people, but Becca snapped the phone back around and continued to flip.

"If you don't mind me saying," she paused to grin again. "He is hot. What would it take for you to give me his number?" But before Del could say anything, she gasped again, tapping the shoulder of the girl next to her. "_Ohmygod_," she breathed. "He's a musician?"

There were four sets of eyes staring at Del. They were asking about her brother. They were asking about _dating_ her brother. They were asking about dating her brother who was in a relationship…with a dude.

She swallowed hard.

"Earth to Del," Becca said, snapping her fingers. "Can I meet him or what?"

"Uh…he's taken." She coughed. "Not single." She sipped her coffee trying to clear the imaginary cobweb in her throat. "Seeing someone."

Becca continued to flip, seemingly not to hear what Del had said. Harvey glared at the phone in her hand.

"He's picking me up today. If you stick around you can ask him, but he'll tell you the exact same thing." Immediately, she tensed. She didn't know what compelled her to say that, but she did, and she couldn't take it back.

Harvey's eyes shot to Del's, portraying a look somewhere between 'shut-the-fudge-up' and 'are-you-crazy?'

"Well, I really should be going," Becca said, setting the phone back onto the table. Harvey grabbed it almost instantly and handed it to Del. "But I'll stay another ten minutes."

Nine and a half minutes later, the girls that had followed Becca to the coffee shop had left, leaving just her, Del, and poor, poor Harvey.

"Well, I better go," Becca said with an air of disappointment. Del breathed in relief. "Maybe I'll meet Blaine some other t—"

And just then, a blue Nissan pulled down the street, stopping in front of the coffee shop.

Del cursed internally and gripped her Styrofoam cup to the point where—if Harvey hadn't alerted her to it—it would have broken in her hands.

"Hmm," Becca almost purred. "I admire punctuality in a man."

Now Del wasn't exactly sure on how old Becca was, but she was younger than Blaine, and certainly not old enough to blatantly pursue 'men.'

Del stood up, Harvey flanking her, and hoped to all things that Blaine would have an errand to run or something, and that he would honk the horn or send her a brief 'c'mon' text. But no such thing happened.

He parked the car, turned it off, and got out.

"Hey, Del. Hi Harvey."

Harvey nodded weakly, his eyes waiting for Del's reaction. Del didn't think he knew why she was so tense, but he knew that she was, and that alone put him on edge.

"I'm just gonna grab a coffee. Nowhere to be today." And he sauntered into the coffee shop without batting an eye at Becca batting her eyes at him.

With a huff of air, she turned on her heels and entered the shop after him.

Harvey made a go to stop her, but his sleeve was caught in Del's hand.

"I'll go stop her if you want," he said kindly. "I…I will." He hemmed and hawed for a long moment. "I'll tell her that there's someone out here looking for her or something."

"No. It's okay. I think…" Suddenly she saw something that made her smile. "I think it's all under control."

Standing in the doorway of the coffee shop was Becca, a look across her face somewhere between dejected, insulted, and just downright embarrassed. She stormed over to Del and stuck a finger in her face. "I knew it. He was too good to be true. You couldn't have just told me and spared me that?" And without letting Del respond, she turned and walked up the street, still huffing away.

Harvey looked at Del. "Um…I am ninety percent sure that I know what's going on…but…"

"I told her. He's taken. He's got a boyfriend."

He sighed irately. "I don't know why she has to be such a b—oh."

Del rolled her eyes.

A few minutes later, Blaine appeared in the door, clutching a medium drip in one hand, his phone in the other, and a chocolate biscotti in between his teeth. Making his way to one of the rarely used café tables, he set down his cup and looked at Del, confusion apparent on his face.

"All right," he said, biting off a mouthful of cookie and setting his phone down by his cup. "Who the _hell_ was that?"

"Becca," Del and Harvey answered at the same time.

"And what the hell is her problem?" His eyebrows were knit together as he threw his hands around in exasperation.

"She's a boy-crazy monster," Del said very matter-of-factly.

Harvey nodded along quickly.

"Okay…" Blaine took a long drink from his cup, blinking in confusion. "I'm standing in line when she comes in behind me and is just standing there. I'll admit, she was kinda staring at me but, hey, that happens," he coughed awkwardly, blushing. Del rolled her eyes. "Anyway so I'm standing there and my phone rings and it's Kurt"—'_boyfriend_' Del whispered to Harvey—"And I said, 'hey, Kurt,' and told him I'd call him back and…" he smiled a little. "And just as I said, 'Goodbye, I love you too,' she got all red and walked away."

Del found it increasingly difficult to keep a straight face.

Harvey on the other hand looked ready to punch something. "Presumptuous little…" But the rest of his statement was muffled.

Blaine sighed. "Want a ride home, Harvey?" He stood, taking another bit of biscotti.

"Yeah, come on." Del yanked on his sleeve again.

"Oh, okay."

And they walked to the car.

"You don't say much do you, Harvey?" Blaine asked as he began down the road.

Harvey just shook his head.

"Eh, that's cool."

**That song has been haunting me for the past few days. I think this is a nice, light fluffy story after the last two heavy-hitters.**

**PLEASE COMMENT. I CHECK MY EMAIL FIRST THING EVERY SINGLE MORNING AND TO GET AN EMAIL FROM FANFICTION SAYING THAT SOMEONE REVIEWED MY STORY JUST MAKES ME WANT TO HUG YOU ALL! AND DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR LONG ONES, EITHER! TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THIS FIC AND ABOUT DEL AND HARVEY AND THEIR SITUATION AND IF YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS AND WHAT YOUR FAVOIRTE COLOR IS JUST DROP ME SOMETHING IN MY REVIEWS! I LOVE ALL OF YOU READERS SO SO SO MUCH! **

**GOODNIGHT!**


	17. My White Knight

**I apologize for any readers who are not familiar with the play "The Music Man." I go to a summer arts camp, and we're putting on "The Music Man" this year, and I couldn't help but throw it in. What you've got to know to get this is that Harold is a lying fraud and Marian knows it but she likes him too much to get him run out of town. The scene they're practicing is on a little bridge and is very romantic and sweet…and awkward as hell if you don't know your scene partner very well. Due to my "Music Man" theme, Del and Harvey's (c'mon people I need a couple name!) theme is "My White Knight" from "The Music Man." I suggest you look it up. It's cute and lovely and wonderful.**

**Thank you, Littlelostsheep for your request and consistent presence. **

**Without any furthermore ado, I give you Chapter 17! Enjoy!**

The weather was reasonably warm for a Thursday in July, and a light breeze blew in from a cluster of clouds far to the south, threatening to rain. The little street on which the coffee shop stood was eerily still and silent, that is, except for two teenagers sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, facing each other, reading lines expressively out of beaten-up scripts.

"…Oh—about what?" Harvey read, his eyes still glued to the book, scanning the lines he had yet to memorize.

"About Professor Harold Hill, Gary Conservatory of Music—Gold Medal Class of ought-five," Del replied, her book held close to her face. "Harold, there wasn't any Gary Conservatory in ought-five." She lowered the book and stared at him knowingly, trying to remember the tips their director had given them earlier that day.

"Why there certainly—!" he began, pausing for a scripted interruption, and setting his book down.

"Because the town wasn't even built 'til ought-six." Her eyes darted down to the script in her lap, and she read—for what seemed like the hundredth time that day—the small, italicized stage direction: _(Kisses him)_

She looked back up at Harvey, and he was looking back at her, uncertainty and apprehension apparent on his face.

"Um…" she began, swallowing hard. "There's no one here. It's not like anyone will be able to say anything. We'll have to do it eventually. Steve"—their director—"said he didn't want to cut it."

"Yeah," he said softly.

"We might as well get comfortable. So…so opening night won't …" She swallowed again, her throat getting dry. "So it won't be a big deal."

"Yeah."

They stared at each other for another minute.

"Are you nervous about your girlfriend getting mad or something, because I would totally understand if—" Del said quickly before Harvey let out a quiet, "Oh, no!" and began sputtering.

He gathered himself after a minute and did his best to clarify. "I don't have a girlfriend," he said, only a little morosely.

Del looked at him expectantly.

"_Nor_ a boyfriend," he groaned, smiling a little and swatting at Del's knee.

Del laughed, too. "You can never be certain…All you artsy guys." He swat at her again. "I just wouldn't want to get anyone upset…or you in trouble."

"No," he said very finally.

There was more awkward, expectant silence.

"So…" She cleared her throat and looked back at her book. "…Harold, there wasn't any Gary Conservatory in ought-five."

"Why there certainly—" Harvey said in false protest, grinning to himself a little bit when Del wasn't looking.

"Because the town wasn't even built 'til ought-six."

This time there was only the slightest pause. Ripping her eyes away from the script, and Harvey from his, they leaned in to close the distance between them, and shared the lightest, briefest, peck on the lips.

They sat there for a second, so close that if one of them even flinched, their noses could have touched. Harvey's eyelashes were fluttering as he blinked behind his thick rimmed glasses, and he swallowed hard as his cheeks turned light pink beneath his freckles.

Del was frozen. The only thing she could register was the overwhelming scent of coffee that seemed to follow Harvey wherever he went.

"Um…" he coughed, looking down at Del's knees for a second. "Line."

"W-what?" she mumbled.

"Line." He coughed again. "You have the next line."

"I…Oh!" And she sat back, picking up the book and holding it unnecessarily close to her nose. "Um….I'll see you at the Sociable," she read flatly and much too quickly.

Harvey, however, didn't move a muscle. "…You knew all the time," he recited soft and breathlessly, throwing the written stage direction—_(Calling after her)_—completely out the window.

Taken back by the dazed expression on his face as he looked up at her from his still leaning posture, she scanned the page in her script, completely and one hundred percent lost. "I…uh…Oh!" She cleared her throat. "S-since July seventh…three days after you came. I t-tore this page out of the Indiana Journal…" She pantomimed holding a sheet of paper, her eyes never leaving the words in the book. "It was originally intended to se against you but now I…" She looked over the edge of her paper at Harvey who was still slouching forward, smiling slightly. "But now, I give it to you…with…all my heart." She set the book down; she didn't have any more lines for this scene. Harvey did, though.

"But if you knew…why didn't you…?" he said, tilting his head to the side, never looking down at the lines he had seemed to memorize on the spot.

There was a smattering of stage direction that rambled on something about a bridge and papers and… _(MARIAN throws him another kiss as she EXITS)_

She leaned forward again and sighed, "This play is far too mushy for my taste…" before taking a deep breath, putting a hand on his shoulder and pulling him in for another kiss.

**~x~**

"It's in the _script_!" Del outright screamed.

"'_Kiss_' is in the script. '_Full on make-out session on the sidewalk_,' on the other hand, is _not_," Blaine rebutted as they drove down the road.

She huffed in exasperation. "We most certainly were not—!"

"Oh, my god, yes you were! I come around the corner and there you are…" He sputtered for a moment, trying to think of the right words. "_Lip-locked_ with _Harvey_!"

"And what's wrong with that?" she spat without thinking.

"Okay, for one, this is your second week of camp. You met him _less than two weeks ago_!" His eyebrows were knitted together so severely that it seemed very plausible that they would be stuck like that forever.

"So? He's nice, and friendly, and bold, and creative and thoughtful and honest and funny…and…and…" she gasped. "And…and the only person at that stuck up camp who'll talk to me about something else other than the play and my drawings!" She crossed her arms across her chest and sniffed, trying to remain composed.

"Del I'm ju—" Blaine tried to interject.

"No!" She threw her hands up. "I don't want to hear anymore from you! Just because it took months—_months_," she repeated, emphasizing the word. "For you to figure out that you liked your guy, doesn't mean _I'm_ that clueless!"

"I am not clue—!"

"SHUT UP!" she squealed. "Just…shut up!" She set her head in her hands, breathing heavily.

"Del," Blaine said pleadingly, reaching out his hand to put on her shoulder.

"Shut. Up. Blaine." Her voice was muffled through her hands, but he understood well enough to recoil and set his hands firmly on the steering wheel.

There was silence in the car.

"I don't even…" she sighed. "I don't even know if he likes me or…or if Harold just likes Marian."

"No," Blaine said nonchalantly. "He likes you."

"I thought I told you to shut up," she snarled at him.

He ignored her. "The way he was looking at you. That was no act. I doubt the greatest actor in the world could fake that." He sighed almost begrudgingly. "He definitely likes you."

She tilted her head a little bit to look at him. "Are you sure?"

"I'm positive," he said flatly.

Rolling her eyes, she leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms again. "Your enthusiasm is overwhelming."

"Well, I don't know this guy, alright?"

She thought for a moment. "He's…a hipster, I guess. He likes to be different, but not in a condescending sort of way. He likes music and acting and drawing—though I've never seen any of his work—and he's quiet. Until you get him on stage at least. It's almost like he has too much on his mind to think about talking, but when the words are given to him, he knows what to do."

Blaine resisted the urge to roll his eyes and smiled a strained smile.

"And he sings…" She sighed. "He's incredible." She giggled, blushing a little. "And he always smells like coffee."

Blaine actually smiled at that. "He sounds…nice."

"Yeah…he really is."

**Thoughts? Comments? Concerns? More lovely requests? Anything and everything is welcome in a review! (Please can we come up with a pet name for them? "Del and Harvey" is a lot to type.) **


	18. My Heart

**WARNING: ONE HELL OF A LONG CHAPTER.**

**Okay, I like to let people come up with what they think characters look like, but…**

**Harvey Johnson = Cameron Mitchell – (6" of height + 6 years of age) + (freckles + lots and lots of freckles + darker hair) **

**This chapter is really, really personal, too. I'm sorry if there are some things people don't understand.**

**Thank you and enjoy!**

"Are you sure you don't need a ride?"

"I'm sure. Tell Blaine thanks, though."

"He doesn't hate you. It's not like he's going to bite."

Harvey laughed quietly. "Thanks for that. But, I still don't need a ride today."

"Okay. See you on Monday."

"Talk to you sooner."

So Del stood up from the sidewalk outside of their coffee shop, hitched her bag up onto her shoulder and jogged towards the little blue Nissan parked on the corner.

Harvey watched the car drive away, waiting for it to completely disappear before he stood up and brushed off his pants, turning to head down the road.

Suddenly, he stepped on something that made him stop in his tracks.

_Oh,_ he thought, looking down at the script sitting on the sidewalk. _Del must have dropped it_. Deciding to text her about it later, he slipped it into his own backpack and started down the road in the opposite direction of the Nissan.

It was a short walk around the block to a little music store that he frequented, tucked up on the second floor of an old building, right above a drycleaners.

Forge Music was a hole-in-the-wall kind of place that no one would ever notice if they weren't looking for it. It was also Harvey's favorite place in the entire world.

He opened the creaking front door and climbed a steep flight of stairs, before reaching an open space full of rows and rows of bookshelves lined with sheet music and scores. Guitars hung on the walls and in the far back, a woman with long, straight, grey hair leaned on a glass counter smiling at Harvey. The entire store was empty otherwise.

"Hi, Harv," she said sweetly.

He smiled back.

"Here for your baby?" she asked, stepping out from behind the counter and heading towards a wall of guitars.

Harvey just nodded.

"Freshly tuned, three new strings, and I replaced a couple loose tuning pegs." She handed him the guitar and he slung the strap around his neck. "When's your next gig?"

"Tonight," he said absentmindedly, settling his arms around the instrument and playing a few careful notes.

"Tonight? Where?"

"At the coffee shop around the block, by the music school. I go there pretty much every single day after camp with Del, and one day I saw that they were looking for some acoustic artists for some kind of after-dark social hour thing…or whatever…and I talked to the people there and they said I could play as long as I promised that I would stay away from the wine." He smirked again.

"Who's Del?"

"A friend from camp. Opposite lead. Marian."

The woman punched him in the arm. "Go get 'em, tiger!"

He blushed viciously. "No, it's not like that. I mean, I think she's great and wonderful and amazing…but I think it's just a part for her. We're just good friends."

"Well, do you like her?"

"Of course I do. She's funny and creative and brave and really, _really_ pretty but I just don't think she feels the—"

"Don't sell yourself short. You're a great guy, and I bet by opening night, she'll be all over y—" she said, leaning up against a bookshelf, before Harvey cut her off.

"I'm sorry! I have to go! Thanks, Ms. P!" he said quickly as he bolted down the stairs.

"Good luck, Harvey!"

If camp gets out at four thirty, and you sit at a coffee shop for an hour, and you take a half hour getting to Forge's and back, and you don't have to be at the coffee shop until eight and no one is expecting you home until nine thirty—after your coffee shop gig—what do you do?

If you're Harvey, you go to the corner of Chapel and State Streets and buy yourself some dinner from the Chinese food carts and sit on a bench in the park feeding the crunchy noodles to the pigeons. And maybe you could draw a pigeon or two or three, too.

At quarter to seven, he started back towards the coffee shop, going through a mental checklist of what he was playing, how he would introduce each song, how he would introduce himself, if he had a spare pick, and if he had his jar.

"…and first up on the docket tonight," the man Harvey knew from behind the counter at the coffee shop began into the microphone. "We have Harvey Johnson." The shop filled with relaxed applause as he stepped forward from his table off to the side. "Now," the coffee shop man continued. "He's only fifteen; keep him away from the wine!"

Through the bubbles of laughter, Harvey made his way up to the microphone, but instead of sitting atop the wooden barstool placed behind it, he moved it to the side of the stage, right by the coffee counter. On it, he placed an empty glass jar with a bright pink sticky-note taped to it.

"Um…hi," he spoke hesitantly into the microphone. "As you know by now, my name is Harvey, and I'm going to sing a little bit for you today. Um…I don't need money, and I know I'm not getting paid for this, but…" He licked his lips and swallowed hard. "If you could spare a couple quarters, tonight I'm playing for the Little Hearts foundation, to provide research and support and resources and stuff for families with children with congenital heart defects." He coughed, running through the familiar speech in his head, trying to think if he forgot to say anything. "Um…I hope you like my music."

There was a brief applause before he looked down at his guitar, took a deep breath, and started strumming.

"_I know I can't take one more step towards you. 'Cause all that's waiting is regret. Don't you know I'm not your ghost anymore? You lost the love I loved the most…_"

**~x~**

"Blaine?" she called across the kitchen.

"Yeah, Mom?"

"Would you mind running out and getting some milk? We're out."

"Sure. No probl—"

"Blaine, you're going somewhere, fantastic, I'll go too!" Del came bounding down the stairs, forcing a laugh, speaking frantically. "Bye, Mom! Going to get milk with Blaine." And she dragged him out the door by his sleeve.

"What's your problem?" he asked as he readjusted his shirt on their front steps.

"I think I left my script on the sidewalk," she said quietly, heading for the garage.

A sly smile spread across Blaine's face as he followed her across the lawn. "Oh, man. You're so dead. If Mom doesn't kill you, Steve will."

"Not if we find it." She shot over her shoulder through gritted teeth.

"We?"

"Yes, we. I know what we're looking for and you have a car. Come on, now."

"So, I'm driving across town at nine at night to look for a book that—"

"Script!"

"—Excuse me, _script_ that a hobo probably stole hours ago?"

"Yes."

Blaine sighed heavily. "It's a good thing I like you." She smiled cheekily at him. "Get in the freaking car…"

**~x~**

"…_Why would you want to make the very first scar? Why would you want to break a perfectly good heart_…?" And as he strummed through the final bars of the song, the shop filled again with a round of applause.

"Okay, after 'Jar of Hearts,' 'My Heart Will Go On,' 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' 'Breaking Your Own Heart,' 'Dancing Away with My Heart,' and that last one, 'A Perfectly Good Heart,' can anyone guess the theme?" He paused for a moment. "Exactly! They're all sung by girls!" There were a few snorts of laughter from the group of only slightly tipsy people in the shop. "Well, I'm diverting from that theme for my final one tonight." He cleared his throat. "I am still fifteen, I'm still a kid, and I still think Disney is pretty cool, so…" He strummed a single chord and looked over to his jar, sitting still with a few bills and a handful of quarters in it. "…I hope you like this one." He took a deep breath and began.

"_Come stop your crying; it'll be alright. Just take my hand, hold it tight. I will protect you from all around you. I will be here, don't you cry_…"

**~x~**

"I'm dead!" Del moaned.

"Yup."

"Mom is gonna kill me!" she continued, marching down the street, Blaine close on her heels.

"Yup," he said half-heartedly.

"Steve is going to have my neck!"

"Yup."

"Shut up!"

"Fine. Can we go now? It's pretty clear that it's gone."

Del sighed. "Fine," she whined. "I can't believe that the one time I actually get some lines, I lose my scr—what's that?"

"What's what?" Blaine asked nonchalantly, leaning up against a telephone pole.

"Shh!" And almost like they had a mind of their own, her feet carried her briskly down the sidewalk towards the pleasant sound that had made her stop.

"Del? Del, come on! I want to go home!" And Blaine went down the road after her.

The sound that she could now distinguish as music grew louder and more defined as she made her way down the street, towards the music school. Eventually, she found herself in front of the doors of the coffee shop, reaching a hand out to the doorknob, turning it, and stepping inside the doors slowly.

"…_You'll be in my heart. No matter what they say. You'll be here in my heart, always_…"

The inside of the shop had been rearranges and crammed with extra tables. Against the far wall, there was someone strumming a guitar and singing passionately into a slightly crackly microphone.

"Del," Blaine panted, finally catching up to her. "Del, what are you—?"

"Shhh!" And she swatted him in the chest.

"…_Don't listen to them.'Cause what do they know? We need each other_…" the singer continued, but Del could only see the top of his head bopping along and the bottom of his blue button up shirt flopping around through spaces in the crowd. Suddenly, though, he played a particularly loud chord and jumped a little, and it was suddenly very obvious why she thought she might have known the musician.

"…Harvey?" she whispered to herself.

"Harvey?" Blaine practically screamed. "What the hell is—?"

"SHH!"

"…_Oh, you'll be in my heart, no matter what they say. You'll be in my heart, always…Always_." And the song came to a close with a final drawn out strum, the people in the shop clapping enthusiastically.

"Thank you, everyone, so much for your time and attention," Harvey said breathlessly, beaming. "I'll be here for another half hour if anyone wants to ask me anything or drop anything into my jar over there for Little Hearts. Thank you again. Have a great night!" He gave an exaggerated bow before being shuffled off the stage by the owners of the shop, eager to introduce someone a little more professional.

"Blaine," Del whispered, whacking him again. "Look up 'Little Hearts.' It sounds familiar. Is it one of Mom's charities?"

He whipped out his phone and began to type. Thirty seconds later, he was reading off of the organization's official website: "…and children with congenital heart defects." He slid his phone into his pocket. "I think Mom must have done something with it, yeah."

"Hmm. Interesting. Stay here." Del darted off into the crowd, trying to sneak up on Harvey. When she found him sitting in the corner, practically inhaling a mango smoothie, she abandoned that plan.

"Hi," she said quietly. "I'd like to ask you a question about Little Hearts."

"Well—oh! Hi, Del." He stood up smiling, and set his guitar down leaning against the wall by his backpack. "Oh! You probably want your script!" He went for his bag, but she grabbed him by the sleeve to stop him.

"Actually, I wanted to ask you about Little Hearts." She smiled. "But thanks for the script, too. My mom would kill me if I lost it."

Harvey looked at her for a moment, seeming to judge how serious she was being, before tugging back at her arm and darting out the back door of the coffee shop.

"Harvey—Harvey, what are we doing?" Del almost squealed as he sat her down on a bench in a courtyard behind the building, dimly lit with a flickering streetlight.

"Little Hearts is—" he began hurriedly, before Del cut in.

"I know. I had Blaine look it up. Con…congeti…con…" She sighed, giving up. "Heart issues in kids, right?" She furrowed her brow unsurely.

"Yeah," He breathed, smirking a little, his voice going back to its normal, soft, non-performing tone now that he was only addressing one person. "Exactly."

"Do you have a relative or…?" His head was already shaking. "Or are you one of those goody little kids that just pick a random charity…?" The same reaction again.

"No," he said very casually, and began to unbutton his shirt from the top.

"Then why Li—_what_ are you doing?" Del gasped, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"Calm down," he said, just as casually. "It's not a relative or just a random charity." He pointed to a spot on his chest, and Del saw a thin, pale, line of a scar that ran from just a few inches below his collar bone down to where it disappeared behind his shirt, right before the bottom of his rib cage. Del gasped a little. "I have pulmonary stenosis and transposition of the great vessels." The words that made Del's head reel just fell trippingly off his tongue, and she was both fascinated and scared to death of what each of them meant. She decided not to ask. "I spent too much time when I was little in a hospital, talking to people from Little Hearts just about stuff, and I met other kids with the same…_issues_, I guess, through the organization, too. So, I like to give back when I can." He started to fix his shirt.

"Um…that's a very nice thing to do," Del stammered, unsure of how to react.

"I suppose." When he had re-buttoned his shirt to the very top button, he looked at her and smiled. "So now you know _deep dark secret_." He emphasized the words dramatically, no doubt trying to add some levity. Del's expression never changed from that look of worry and uncertainty. "What's wrong?"

"Are…are you…? You're alright, right?"

"Oh, sure," he said nonchalantly. "I get winded a little easier than most people, and yeah, _maybe_ I'll have to have another surgery someday, but right now? I'm perfectly fine."

Del bit her lip at the mention of surgery.

"Hey, don't do that." He set his hand on her shoulder. "I'm tough," he chuckled. "I don't let my own organs boss me around."

She slid over on the bench next to him and laid her head on his shoulder.

"I can hear your heartbeat. It sounds funny," Del said unthinkingly.

"Yeah, I know. But as long as it sounds like something, I'm not worried."

Del just scooted closer to his side.

**So, Harvey's got his 'thing:' that one thing not quite so perfect with his life. I like it a lot. Do you? I've been trying to figure out Harvey's drama for days now, and I decided to work with what I know. *Wink*wink* Guess what my 'thing' is?**

**I HOPE YOU LIKED IT AND PLEASE REVIEW!  
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**(P.S. KURT IS COMING)  
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	19. Now I Don't Have to Worry as Much

**Well, here we are. **

To call the atmosphere awkward would have been the understatement of the year. At the head of the table sat Del's mom, with Blaine on the other end and Del and Kurt to each side.

Yup.

Del had spent the better part of the last fifteen minutes Kurt had been there, really just looking at him. He was taller than she had been expecting, and had impeccable taste in clothes. His hair was—for lack of a better word—coiffed, and he never seemed to stop smiling. That is, until her mom began to talk.

"…So, Kurt," Mom began. "Tell me about yourself. What are your hobbies…your aspirations in life?" She seemed completely relaxed and genuinely interested, but Kurt looked like a deer in headlights.

"I…um…well…" He cleared his throat and sat a little straighter. "I sing," he coughed. "And I hope that whatever I do with my future, singing will be a part of it." He took a long breath. "But Broadway is always the goal." From where Del sat across the table from him, Kurt looked unhealthily pale.

"Hmm." Her mom raised an eyebrow and looked up, thinking. "I'd go see you on Broadway," she said casually.

Immediately, color flooded back into Kurt's cheeks and he smiled.

Blaine, who had been silent for the past few minutes, obviously on edge, coughed.

Del laughed a little.

And their mom sat blissfully unaware of the looks being shot across the table.

Del turned to Blaine and raised an eyebrow, smiling slyly. He nodded back. Kurt's eyes darted in between the two, and Blaine smiled a wide, only semi-convincing smile.

"…I mean, I've never been to New York, but that certainly sounds like reason to go." Their mom continued along quickly with an air of nonchalance that was almost aggravating. "Blaine has his heart set on the east coast too, for some reason. Sent applications to NYU, Yale, Harvard, the University of Connecticut, Princeton…I swear it's like he's _allergic_ to Ohio all of a sudden…!"

Del just let her mother ramble on. She didn't want to say that Blaine wanted to go out there to follow Kurt, simply because she had been confided in, and now was just not the time.

Now Del, being a particularly observant person and knowing her mother for the better part of her fifteen years on this planet, could have told you that when her mother ranted—or spoke quickly at all—she was either angry or nervous.

"…I mean I understand that he's an artist and there are better opportunities out there and all of that Bohemian kind of stiff that you artist people are into but not everyone has to go running off the second they graduate from high school…!" she continued at an absurd pace.

Del almost laughed. For some reason, her mother, the most together and composed human being she had ever know, was sitting in her own kitchen, surrounded by her children and the significant other of one of her children, and seemed to be as nervous as—

"…I mean Del, she has never mentioned anything about New York or even where she wants to go to college, but I guess it's a guy thing!" She smiled briefly, and continued. "All of your independence and manly kind of who-needs-protection attitude!" She took a deep breath, continued, her voice almost…shaky? "But I mean, I guess it's not so bad now because when he first said New York all I could think was, 'Oh my god, my baby in alone in New York,'"—Blaine blushed violently—"But I guess it's better now because, he won't be alone in New York." She sniffed and smiled sweetly at a completely stunned Kurt. "If you two love each other as much as you say you do, then I haven't a doubt in my mind that you'll have fantastic a New York filled future!"

The three just stared at the woman, their expressions blank either from shock or an overload of emotion.

And their mother simply took a deep breath and said, "I apologize for that. I get carried away sometimes." She smiled at Blaine. "You're just so lovely together and it's not like I have any other relationship to focus my attention on," she laughed jokingly.

Del swallowed hard, and forced a laugh. What her mother didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

"Blaine, dear, pass the salad?" her mother asked, returning back to her relaxed insouciance.

He picked up the bowl and sent it to the table, too frazzled to do much else.

**~x~**

"Well, that went well," Del said, peeking her head into her brother's room later that night.

"Awkward as hell," Blaine sighed from where he lay on his bed, toying with his phone.

"At least we know she approves."

"Yeah," he sighed again, this time almost blissfully.

"What?"

"She says we have a future."

Del was silent for a second. "Well, don't you?"

"Of course!" Blaine said almost instantly. "But, it's nice to hear that someone else has as much faith in us as we do."

"You're always telling me about Burt, though and…I always have," Del said quietly.

"I know. And thanks. But, you know what I mean. It's Mom. What she says goes and…" He smiled to himself. "We go now."

"I like him, too."

"He likes you."

Del thought for a moment and smiled again. "Night, lover-boy."

There was no snippy rebuttal or eye-roll, just a brief, "Night."

**I wrote this chapter out three different ways and I'm still not thrilled with it. I can only assume you are not either. I am sorry. Please review and be as upset with me as you want**.


	20. Dog

**Okay, so this is long. It's the longest chapter and it's a little bit devoid of Del, but I just couldn't let an opportunity like this slip. I love how this came out and I hope you do too. **

They say that dogs understand more then we give them credit for. They say that they have a sixth sense, an ability to tune into our emotions. They are fiercely loyal and capable of unconditional love. Dogs understand how we are feeling and how to make us feel better. Dogs don't understand prejudice or hate, they only understand if you are a person who loves them or not. Dogs are unpolluted, uncorrupted, untainted souls and much, much smarter than the world would like to give them credit for…

**~x~**

Del was nine and Blaine was eleven the day they had brought Zoey home from the breeders. Weighing a measly little five pounds, they had taken turns on the car ride home, holding her in their laps.

That night, Del heard a noise coming from the kitchen and had found Zoey whining in her new crate. Even though her mom had said that she needed to get used to her new bed, Del couldn't stand to see her in there. She took her out and lay with her on the floor for almost an hour.

She was almost asleep when her brother came down, too.

"Del, you need to let the puppy sleep in her own bed," he said, leaning up against the kitchen table.

"Call her be her name, Blaine. How would you feel just being 'the boy', huh?"

"I'm sorry," he said, hanging his head, his voice full of genuine remorse. "Zoey," he addressed the sleeping dog. "You need to sleep in your own bed."

"But, if I don't sleep in my own bed, then she shouldn't have to!" Del protested, hugging Zoey closer. "And if you didn't, then…Mom and Dad couldn't get mad at all of us!"

Blaine furrowed his brow and looked at his little sister. Even his eleven year old brain knew that he would have done anything for Del. So he walked over to the spot of floor where Del sat and slid down onto the tile. He let Del, with Zoey in her lap, nestle up to his side, and sighed.

"Just one night, okay? I don't want you to get in trouble for you not sleeping in your bed." Blaine crossed his arms over his chest and let his head fall on top of Del's on his shoulder.

"Okay," Del said as she drifted off to sleep.

But she would never live up to this agreement. Though Del never got in trouble for not sleeping in her bed, after three days of sneaking around, Blaine's conscious couldn't take it.

So just for that one night, Del brought Zoey into her room, where she promptly fell asleep at the foot of her bed. Blaine slept in Del's room too, curled up on the floor, watching his sister in case she accidentally kicked the puppy.

While Blaine eventually went back to his room, Zoey has slept at the foot of Del's bed ever since.

**~x~**

"What am I gonna say, Zoey?" Blaine asked as he paced up and down across the floor of his room. "How am I gonna do it?" From her perch on the end of his bed, nestled in his green comforter, her eyes followed him across the room.

He turned to face her, his expression stony and severe. He opened his mouth to talk, but it took him a while before words came out. "I'm…" he began, his voice catching in his throat. He coughed and tried again. "I'm—" Again, he sighed in exasperation, becoming visibly more flustered. He bit his lip, and took another moment to gather himself before trying for a final time. "Zoey, I'm…I'm gay."

She just cocked her head to one side and wagged her tail a little at the mention of her name.

He sat down on his bed and she made her way over to him, sitting with her paws just an inch or so away from his thigh. "You don't care, do you, Zoey?" he breathed, tears welling up in his eyes. "You…you'll always love me…'cause I'll always love you, right?"

Silently, she picked up her paw and set it on his knee, looking up at him.

Finally, the tears fell from his eyes, one landing right on Zoey's nose. She shook her head and sneezed, jumping up from where she sat. Blaine couldn't help but laugh.

The thing about toy breed dogs is that even when they're full grown, like four-year-old Zoey was then, you can still hold them like babies. So that's what Blaine did. He was sacred to death of what would happen when he told his parents what he had just admitted to his dog, so he picked her up and just hugged her; the one person that he knew would accept him no matter what. He cried a little more, really just getting it out of his system, and Zoey let him.

Finally, he set her back down, and fixed the fur on the top of her head saying, "I'll be right back, Zoey. Stay." And with those few words, she sat back down on the comforter and watched him leave.

"…Mom, Dad, I have something I need to tell you…" she heard him say shakily as he stepped down the stairs.

**~x~**

"Del…Just go! There's nothing you can do about it! There's nothing anyone can do! Just…go away!" Blaine hollered, and Del had run from her brother's room, half scared for herself, half sad to see him so upset.

She sat on her bed, her knees pulled up to her chest, listening to Blaine toss things around his room and curse from across the hall, just wishing she knew what was wrong. Eventually, things quieted down, and when the door to her room moved just a little, she was hoping it was Blaine, ready with an apology or and explanation or searching for her advice.

It wasn't. It was Zoey, pushing at the door that had been left slightly ajar.

"Zoey, what's wrong with him?" The dog jumped up onto her bed and sat next to her with a sigh. "You don't know either?" Zoey sighed again.

Almost a half hour later, there was a knock on Del's door.

"What?" she asked coldly, almost sure of whom it was.

"Can I come in?" Blaine asked.

"Whatever."

He entered the room and sat next on the floor in front of the door, never looking up. Zoey jumped down to sit next to him. "I'm sorry for blowing up on you. It's just…there's been a lot of crap at school lately and I'm…I'm really sick of it all."

"I was just trying to help…I don't like seeing you so upset…" Del said into her knees.

"I know," Blaine replied, and finally he looked up at her. His eyes were red like he'd been crying. "And I would love it if you could help me but…I just don't think you can. I don't think anyone can."

Slowly, he rolled up his sleeve and showed Del his arm, a long scrape running up the side. "Remember the guys I told you about a few weeks ago? The one that were just callin' me names?"

Dell nodded, frozen in shock.

"Well, I guess they decided that the side of a building would be more effective." He sighed, his head dropping again. "I can't…I can't do this, Del. I don't know what my other option is but…I can't—" But he stopped suddenly, and looked over to his wounded arm.

Zoey, from where she sat on the floor, had begun to lick at his scrape. Every now and then she would look up at him, wag her tail a little and then go back, nudging her nose against his elbow if she couldn't reach a spot.

Del and Blaine were completely silent for a while.

"You can, Blaine," Del said solemnly. "Do Mom and Dad know about this?"

He just shook his head, never looking away from Zoey.

"You have to tell them. We can do something, you know. This can't go on. I won't let it." She stood up form her bed and hovered over her brother. "If you don't tell, I will. I—" She stopped, looking down at Zoey. "_We _won't let you get hurt any more."

He nodded slowly and Del sat back down on her bed.

That night at dinner, Blaine told his parents about what had been going on at school and showed them his arm.

Tat night, Zoey slept in Blaine's room, refusing to let one minute of his arm being reachable go by without her taking care of it.

**~x~**

"…How do I look?" Blaine asked, turning from the mirror in his room to face Zoey sitting on his bed. She wagged her tail excitedly.

It was prom night and he couldn't have been more excited. He had a tux and a nice tie and some fancy shoes and he was wearing his hair slicked back and he was just really going to spend the night with a good friend of his. Double-stag, Ryan called it.

"I know I told you the prom didn't start until eight, but I told Ryan that I'd pick him up." He smiled into the mirror checking his teeth. "So I've got to go."

Zoey whined a little.

"Oh, come on. You know Ryan. I'll be back by midnight with the way his parents are." He laughed a little and straightened the red carnation on his jacket. "I'll see you when I get home." And then he bounded down the stairs.

The last thing she heard before she fell asleep was the jingling of keys, Del and her mom's voice throwing a rushed, 'Have fun!' and the quick opening and closing of the front door.

The sound of the phone ringing stirred her. She jumped from Blaine's bed and ran down the stairs into the kitchen, where Mom was talking frantically into the phone and Del and Dad were sitting in the living room looking concerned.

"…Ryan, Ryan honey, calm down. What's wrong?" Mom asked. There was a long pause and Zoey could hear someone talking very quickly on the other end of the phone.

She jumped into Del's lap.

"…Oh my god… Where are you…? Are your parents home…? Can you get yourselves back here…? They stole his keys…!" At this, Dad immediately stood up from where he sat on the couch.

"Where are they?" he asked as he reached for his keys.

"Ryan's house," Mom said quickly, and Dad disappeared out the door.

That night, Zoey slept in Blaine's room again, and if she could have, would have spent the entire night licking every single scrape and cut and bruise on his body.

But she couldn't because there were too many.

When he woke up the next morning, he found Zoey practically sitting on his face, licking at a cut above his left eye.

He let her do it, figuring that since she had been the only one to really see him before he left for prom, she should be the one to try to get him back to looking like that, too.

That afternoon, she sat in his lap as he scrolled hesitantly through the website for the Westerville branch of Dalton Academy for Boys.

**~x~**

"Zoey, would you mind sharing me?" Blaine asked, lying on his bed one night. She picked her head up and looked at him, cocking her head to one side. "There's this guy at school and…I don't know, he's just…" Blaine sighed. "Would you mind sharing me with him? He's really nice. And he's my friend now but…I'm just realizing that maybe it would be okay to be more than friends."

Zoey stood up and walked over to him, setting her head on his chest.

"But I'm asking you about this first, okay? Because I need to know that you wouldn't mind me staying late after school and maybe leaving us alone if he ever came over." He sat up and looked at her. "Could you do that?"

Zoey wagged her tail and once again set her paw on Blaine's knee in an act of silent reassurance.

"Thanks, Zoey."

The next day, Blaine flew up to his room, almost tripping over Zoey in the hallway.

"Oh!" he gasped and picked her up. "Zoey, it happened!" He kissed her on the top of her head. "Why have I been so blind to this!" He danced around the hall, Zoey swaying in his arms. "If I'm ever this much of a numbskull again, I give you full permission to bite me or slap me or something."

Finally, he set her down and sat at the top of the stairs smiling. "You'll meet him one day and you'll see what that was all about. I promise."

**~x~**

There are some dogs you can train to react to certain words, and sometimes, the dogs can train themselves.

"Kurt asked me to prom," Blaine announced at dinner one night.

While everyone in attendance (i.e. Del and Mom) seemed shocked, Zoey actually sprang from where she was sitting on the couch and ran over to the table barking.

"What's wrong with your dog?" Mom asked Del.

"I don't know," she shot back, but by now, the barking had stopped.

"…Anyway," Blaine continued. "He asked me to prom and I said yes."

Once again, Zoey began to snarl and bark and pace up and down in the kitchen.

"I'll take you for a walk after dinner, Zoey," Del said gently, and surely enough, Zoey stopped barking.

Dinner continued like this: every time 'prom' was mentioned, Zoey would proceed to bark until the conversation took on a different subject. No one really thought much of it other than Blaine.

That night in his room, he sat on the floor facing Zoey. Cautiously, he took a deep breath and said, "prom" very slowly.

Zoey lowered her head and snarled. The realization hit Blaine like a ton of bricks.

"C'mere," he said softly, patting his lap. Zoey made her way over to him and sat on his knees. "I'll be fine," he said. "You don't have to worry about p—_that dance_ this time. I promise I'll be okay."

Without hesitation, Zoey stood on her hind legs, leaning her front paws on his chest and licked the faint scar above his left eye, then when he went to pet her, the one on his arm.

"I'm not scared anymore, Zoey. I can't be. You've taken care of me for the past six years, but now I have someone _I_ need to take care of."

She wagged her tail weakly.

"I've got to watch out for him. There was nothing you could have done to keep me from getting hurt all those years ago, but I can do something now. If it kills me trying, I will never let Kurt get hurt."

She sat back on his knees and looked up at him, her head tilted to one side.

"The day you meet him, I want you to be able to search him up and down and not even find a paper cut. Okay?" He laughed a little, confusing even himself about whether that statement was a joke or one hundred percent serious.

From what Blaine told her, 'that dance' went pretty well that year.

**~x~**

"He loves me," Blaine said one day as he sat on his couch, pretty much staring into space.

To an uninformed onlooker, it would have seemed that he was talking to himself, Zoey knew otherwise.

"I told him I love him and he loves me, too." A ridiculous grin was plastered across his face. "Can you believe it, Zoey?" He turned around to face the dog sitting on the other end of the couch. "I love someone and they love me back. He loves me back, Zoey. Can you believe it!"

Zoey just raised her head and wagged her tail slightly as if to say, 'of course I can believe it, Blaine, you're wonderful.'

**Did you like it? I cried a little writing it, but I like the way it turned out. Please, please, please, please review!**

**Oh, and LittleLostSheep…YOU ROCK. **

**Goodnight. **


	21. Harold or Harvey?

It's funny, really, how after just knowing someone for a little while, you can already start to associate certain things with that person.

Coffee and sidewalks would forever make Del think of the days she spent after camp with Harvey.

One day in particular, they sat side to side, really not looking at anything, asking each other questions that would probably sound stupid to most people.

Del and Harvey weren't most people.

"…Hogwarts house?" she asked, picking up a pebble and throwing it across the road.

"Ravenclaw," he said very reassured.

"Me too," Del replied with a smile. She paused for a second. "It's your turn."

"Oh! Um…chick-flicks: Yay or nay?"

"Yay. But don't call them chick-flicks. I think guys could like them if they wanted too." She sighed, taking a sip of her drink.

"I like them. They make you feel good." Harvey smiled again. Come to think of it, Harvey smiled a lot when he was around Del.

"I agree…Um…favorite season and why." She picked up a little green leaf that had no doubt been blown from the shrubs lining the street.

"I like fall," he said, toying with his own crunchy brown piece of plant. "And I don't really know why. It's just kind of that time of year when everything slows down things get really, really pretty for one last time before it all freezes…" He shuddered a little. "I hate the cold. And the ice. And snow."

"I like winter, though," Del rebutted quietly. "Sure, the cold sucks, but there's the holidays and everyone gets all snuggly and things…things are quiet in the winter. I like quiet." She dropped her leaf and let the breeze take it down the street. "Your turn."

"Pool, lake or ocean?" he asked cracking his knuckles.

"Pool," she said quickly. "Pool, all the way. I can't stand water that's not…"

"Had the crap chlorinated out of it?" Harvey offered.

"Exactly. My pool should be open soon, actually. You like to swim?"

"Oh yeah," he said enthusiastically. "But it's been forever since I've been to the beach or anywhere…Wait. You have a pool?"

"Yup. You'll have to come by sometime."

"Sounds cool. It's your turn." This time he turned around to face Del, setting his head in his hands, leaning on his crossed legs.

"Nope. I asked you the swimming question. That counts. Go." She copied him, sitting with her legs folded, their knees practically touching.

"Okay," he sighed, looking at her quizzically. "Um…" His eyes darted from Del to the script sitting by her.

"Well?" Del pressed, raising and eyebrow.

He smiled almost slyly. "Harvey or Harold?"

"Well—" She paused, searching his expression for clarification. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, 'Harvey or Harold?'" He blinked a few times and smiled even wider.

"Well…I…Harold is a lovely name…" she began, teasingly. Harvey's face fell. "But…!"

A gleam reappeared in his eyes and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth again.

"Harvey is really cool too." She put a hand on his shoulder. "And if this is your twisted, creative hipster guy way of asking me if I like you…" She smiled at the confused look on his face. "I will give you my straight-forward, mainstream answer of, yeah."

He was silent for a second, a half smile on his face as he sat in thought. "Um…would you like to accompany me to the foot bridge?" he asked shakily.

"Would you stop speaking in code?" She laughed, and gave him a brief peck on the cheek. "We don't have to read all of act two if you want to kiss me."

So he did, and it was sweet and nice and lacking the terrible awkwardness of having to say a line directly proceeding it.

After a minute, though, Del leaned back and pointed at him. "Ooh! I got a good one!" she almost screamed. "Ear buds or head phones?"

Harvey smiled. "Ear buds."

And Del smiled back. "Me too."

**THIS WAS SO SHORT BUT I JUST LOVE DELVEY SO MUCH THAT I COULDN'T GO TO SLEEP WITHOUT LEAVING YOU A LITTLE SOMETHING. BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, AND WRITING IS HOW I SHOW MY LOVE. REVIEWING IS HOW YOU SHOW YOURS SO…PLEASE DO THAT. **


	22. Man to Man

**If I may say so myself… Blaine/Harvey = BROTP 'TIL THE END OF TIME. **

He sat on the sidewalk, leaning up against the wall, his sketchpad in his lap and the end of a pencil in between his teeth. Sighing, he pushed up the bridge of his glasses and continued at his paper, erasing with particularly aggravated gusto.

"…stupid, stupid, stupid…" he grumbled to himself under his breath. "…pluck up already…grow a pair…you sheepish…awkward…cowardly…just…just ask…just…GAH!" He tossed his head back in exasperation, only to smack it against the bricks of the wall and send a shot of pain down his neck.

"…_Oooow_…" he whined, grabbing the back of his head with his free hand.

Finally, he closed his book, too frustrated to continue. You see, to draw a portrait, it is best to have a live model. And, you see, to have a live model, you must have the gumption to ask someone if you can draw them. And, of course you see, Harvey was not a very brave person.

So he stuck to drawing his hasty and inaccurate sketches whenever the opportunity would present itself. Most times it would be the second she would leave, or if she scrambled off to the bathroom or somewhere for a moment—much like now—and he would race to open his book and do his best to get her features right.

It would be so much easier if he would just man up.

It would be so much easier if he knew that she'd just say yes and not be all freaked out and think he was a creep.

But he didn't know that. So he stuck to what he did know: hiding.

Looking over his shoulder at the coffee shop door, ready to shove his book back into his bag the second it opened, he turned to his sketchpad again. Analyzing the picture he had just attacked so viciously with an eraser, he sighed. He was a perfectionist, and he knew it, and he knew that perfectionism does no good for an amateur artist, but he just felt bad every time he made a mistake. He felt like he was doing her wrong somehow.

So he went back to work, engulfing himself in memories and mental pictures. He was so focused, he never even heard a car come around the corner and park in front of the shop.

"Hey, Harvey. Where's Del?" At the sound of the voice, Harvey startled, gasping and ripping his eyes from the paper up at the person standing over him.

"Oh! Hi Blaine. Del's in the bathroom." He said shakily, nodding towards the door. "You scared the crap out of me, man."

"Oops." Blaine turned his back to the wall and slid to the ground next to Harvey. "Whatcha doodlin'?" He craned his neck, but Harvey slammed the book shut almost instinctively.

"N-nothing!" he blurted out, folding his hands over the cover protectively.

"Hey, relax. I get it, personal stu—"

"Del," Harvey said very quietly.

"What?" Blaine asked, seeming to have genuinely not heard him.

"Del. I was drawing Del…" He sighed heavily. "Again."

Blaine just kind of stared at him. His expression was unreadable; he didn't seem angry, nor particularly pleased, and scariest of all, he wasn't saying anything.

There were another tense few breaths, before Blaine finally spoke. "Well," he said, picking his words very carefully. "That's…"

"I'm a creep aren't I?" Harvey cut in.

"No, you're—"

"I am, aren't I? I draw people behind their backs and don't even have the _balls_ to ask them to their face if I can or not!" He hung his head and began to rub his temples.

"You're not a creep," Blaine said seriously. "You like her. You like her…" He cleared his throat. "A lot."

"I do…and she says she likes me, too but…" He shrugged, trying to judge Blaine's reactions. His expression remained neutral. "…I just don't know how to be the guy that girls like. I'm a dork. I'm socially awkward and never had girlfriend before in my life and I don't know how to talk to anyone—"

"_That's_ not true," Blaine said sticking a finger in the air in protest.

Harvey just scrunched his face up in frustration and looked at Blaine pleadingly. "What do I do?"

Blaine just looked at him. "Why are you asking me?" His tone was sincere, a real question, nothing sarcastic or cold to it.

"Because…I don't know. You're a guy and who's sat through my emotional breakdown without slapping me or walking away calling me pathetic. That's a first for me."

Blaine was quiet some more. Then he looked down at Harvey's sketchpad and pointed to it, saying, "Don't hide that kind of stuff. Girls think it's…endearing." He sighed heavily and stared into space for a second. "She's my little sister, okay? And I'm going to be a defensive brother, but…you seem nice, Harvey." He gave him a reassuring smile. "And though I may not always be on your side,"—Blaine's face grew stony and serious—"And I'm not kidding about that. I will _hunt you down_ if you ever do anything to hurt her."

Harvey swallowed hard and nodded.

"I will tell you right now…" He tapped the cover of Harvey's sketchbook. "Del wouldn't find that creepy. She'd love it." Blaine leaned back against the wall and put his hands behind his head casually. "Knowing her, she'd probably want to draw you, too."

Harvey smiled ever so slightly.

"—Sorry I was so long in there," Del said, bursting out of the front door of the coffee shop, her eyes on her phone in her hand. "The place is deserted and I struck up a conversation with the lady behind the counter. Would you believe that she's a huge fan of—Blaine?" She stopped short and eyeballed the two boys sitting on the ground, looking back at her. Harvey looked like he had been slapped in the face, and Blaine was looking strikingly confident.

"Hmm," Blaine began, raising an eyebrow. "I didn't know I had such a fan base. Mom, you, and now the coffee shop lady." He stood up and brushed off his pants. "I'd say today was pretty good."

Del rolled her eyes and looked quizzically at Harvey, still sitting on the ground, looking up at her with a ridiculous half-smile plastered across his face. Del also raised a questioning eyebrow—mirroring her brother almost exactly—and Harvey sprung to his feet.

And his sketchpad fell off his lap, open on the ground.

And Del picked it up.

And at first, Harvey went to stop her, but Blaine elbowed him in the side and shot him a look that read, plain as day, 'are you nuts?'

Del stood there for a second, her phone in one hand, the book in the other, her eyes narrowed on the page. Everything was very, very, very quiet.

Slowly, she looked up at Harvey and smiled. "These are really good." She flipped through another few pages before closing the book and handing it back to him. "Really, really good."

Blaine elbowed him again before heading off casually towards the car.

"Would you…" Harvey began, stumbling over his words. "Sometime, you know, if you have nothing better to do…" He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "This is going to sound really weird, but…would you be completely apposed to letting me draw you some time? –I'd let you keep it if you wanted to!"

Del smiled. "I wouldn't be apposed in the slightest." She stepped backwards towards her car. "And I wouldn't feel right keeping any of your work." And she turned towards her car, a swing in her brisk step.

"I'll see you tomorrow!" Harvey called down the street.

"See ya!" Del tossed over her shoulder before getting into the car.

Harvey stood on the sidewalk outside of the deserted coffee shop, clutching his sketchbook to his chest like a life raft, grinning like an idiot, and feeling like he could take on the world.

**I am writing this very late at night and apologize for anything less than coherent. Your reviews are the sunshine of my world. **


	23. I Approve

**So, it's another long one. Yeah. I like it. I like it a lot, actually. Very Harvey-centric. More Music Man references. More brotherly Blaine. More awkward teenager Harvey. More 'to hell with gender rolls I'm gonna get my man' Del. More Ms. P. By the way, what are your thoughts on her? I'm sorry. Please read this chapter. It literally took me three days to write. I hope you like it. **

**P.S. Pretty much the closest I'll ever get to a SongFic:**

_ "See ya on Monday!" Del called over her shoulder as Blaine honked his car's horn impatiently once again._

_ "See ya…" Harvey replied, watching her jog down the street. "Oh! Wait! Del!" And he bolted down the sidewalk after her. "Del! Wait up! Del!"_

_ "What—?" Del began, turning around, only to find Harvey running down the street towards her, his backpack over one shoulder throwing him off balance, reducing his run to something comparable to a waddle. _

_ "Del!" he panted, skidding to a halt in front of her. "Del…I'm having another concert this weekend. And I was wondering…" He took a deep breath, and composed himself. "Would you want to come? Blaine, too…if he wants." He smiled proudly, but blushed a little. _

_ Del seemed genuinely excited. "Of course! When?"—she waved off another honk from Blaine—"Where?" _

_ "Tomorrow at eight at the coffee shop." He nodded in the direction of the brick building behind them. "After last week, they asked if I could come back! They want me as a regular! I mean, I don't know how that'll work when school starts again, but, hey." He shrugged. "So, sound good?"_

_ "Sounds great. See you tomorrow." And she turned towards the car with a loud and aggravated, "CALM YOURSELF!" _

_ Harvey couldn't help but laugh. _

**~x~**

Harvey was on the verge of tears. Yesterday at five, he had been standing on the sidewalk, completely relaxed and prepared and calm about his performance, but today at noon…?

"What am I gonna do, Ms. P?" Harvey almost whined as he paced up and down the aisles of sheet music in Forge's, running his fingers through his hair nervously.

"You're going to go to that coffee shop and you're going to get up on that stage and you're going to sing your little heart out just like you did last week." She put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. "Are we clear?"

"B-b-but what am I going to sing? I can't look like an idiot in front of—" he asked, his voice shaky.

"You don't have a set list?" she asked, her voice laced in disbelief.

Harvey hung his head and shook it ever so slightly.

Ms. P sighed. "Well," she said, turning towards the bookshelf. "Variety is the key, no?" She motioned for Harvey to follow her as she wove in and out of the shelves, picking up leafs of sheet music here and there.

Finally, she set down the pile of papers on the counter and pointed to them. "How many songs do you usually sing?"

"Six or seven, why?"

"Pick." She patted the top of the stack and stared Harvey down.

"But what if I don't know any of them?"

"I've been teaching you since you were four." She nudged his arm. "That means you're good. And besides, you've still got over seven hours to learn them."

Harvey swallowed hard and tugged nervously at the strap of his guitar case, synched tightly over his shoulder.

"I've got to be good tonight. Del's gonna be there." He smiled a little bit and looked up at Ms. P with pleading eyes.

"So she's going?" she replied, raising an eyebrow in question.

"Yes."

"And you asked her yourself?"

"Yes."

"And she seemed…excited?"

"Well, I suppose so. I mean—" but he was cut off by a thump on the back.

"Congratulations, boy! I told ya to be a little more confident!" Suddenly, her face grew serious. "Oooh, you need to pick out some really good songs."

"Thank you!" he practically screamed, much to Ms. P's amusement.

"Relax," she laughed. "We can do this." And she continued to fiddle around in the stack of papers. "Now, do you want it to just blatantly come out and say, 'the girl I like is in the audience and all of these sappy love songs are for her,' or would you prefer a more subtle, 'yes, these are love songs, but hey, they could be for the lady behind the coffee counter for all I care,' approach."

Harvey stared at her in confusion for a moment before answering with a weak, "Her brother is going to be there."

"Subtlety is your friend, young grasshopper." And she automatically pulled the tabs for 'Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?' out of the pile and stowed it in a drawer under the counter.

Harvey twitched a little.

"So, tell me about her. What is she like?" Ms. P continued to shuffle around the papers.

"Well, she's really outgoing. And, I don't know, just…great. I mean, on the first day of camp, I thought absolutely everyone there were these stuck up rich kids th—"

"Which you're not…?"

"I am not stuck up!" Harvey protested.

"True. Continue."

"Well, I thought everyone was going to be mean and all 'I'm cooler than you' and everything, and for the most part, they were. Except for Del." He sighed. "We did all of the clichéd get to know people games and stuff, and when we had to say something interesting about ourselves, without skipping a beat she said that she's writing a novel."

"Interesting…" Ms. P said quietly.

"Yeah, and of course it gets to my turn and I sputter for a moment before saying something stupid like I can do a Rubix Cube in…however many freakin seconds I can do a freakin Rubix Cube!" He threw his hands up in exasperation.

"But…?"

"But we were sitting in art and I was just kind of doodling because I really didn't feel like drawing anything major at the time, and she comes and sits next to me and says that she could never do a Rubix Cube…and proceeds to show me her drawing of one." He laughed a little.

"And then…?"

"And then when it came time to audition for our parts in the play we were scene partners and we got the parts and we started practicing and Steve said he didn't want to cut the kiss and then she _did_ kiss me and then she said she liked me and, _god_, do I like her, and she knows about Little Hearts and now she's coming to see me sing and her brother is coming because I was nice and invited him and…GAH!" Absentmindedly, he pounded the counter nest to him with his fist—and then gasped. "I'm so sorry!"

By now, Ms. P was in a fit of laughter. "Honey…Harv…Oh…Just…Just relax!" She took a deep breath to compose herself. "Just go and sing whatever you want tonight. Make it good and make it mean something." She patted his cheek and handed him a stack of music. "I'll put that on your father's tab, okay?"

He smiled wearily. "Thank you. So much. I…thanks. You should come tonight, too, you know. It would be great to have you there. One more familiar face…"

"Oh, you know I'd love to, but I have other plans tonight. I'm sure you'll do fine."

"Okay. Thanks again." He turned and headed for the door. "See you soon!"

"I'm sure I will. Now go practice!" She picked up the stack of music and headed back into the bookshelves to file them away.

"I will! Bye!" But he wasn't out the door three seconds before he popped his head back in. "MS. P!"

"Yes, hon?"

"I just had a crazy idea…and I was going to ask you about it…but I think that if someone thinks about it rationally, they'll tell me I'm an idiot…so…never mind…bye."

"Good luck, dear!"

**~x~**

"…I hope you like my music tonight." As Harvey finished and began to strum, Del began to clap enthusiastically.

No one else did, though.

"Clap," she commanded under her breath, as she elbowed Blaine—who had been very occupied with pouring copious amounts of sugar substitute into his coffee—in the ribs. He obliged, snapping his head up at the stage.

"_I found God, on the corner of first and Amistad. Where the west, was all but won…_" he began after giving his jar, off to the side of the stage like always, a sideways glance. "…_Lost and insecure, you found me, you found me. Lying on the floor, surrounded, surrounded_…" His eyes were closed and he swayed a little as he sang, seeming to be in his won little world.

And Del could do nothing but stare at him, her mouth open in amazement and eyes wide.

Blaine on the other hand…

"Del," he whispered, tapping her shoulder. "Del, he's…he's good…" There was an aggravating tone of shock and surprise to his voice.

"I told you that two weeks ago, Blaine. Nice to know you're listening." She batted him away and leaned on the table, refocusing on Harvey.

"…I know, but I thought you meant like, old musical good. Like, I wasn't expecting him to try this…and pull it off…well." Blaine's brow was furrowed, and his eye darted back and forth between quizzical glances at Del and unbelieving stares at Harvey.

"Good is good, Blaine. Now shut up."

"I beg to differ," he rebutted, rather loudly in comparison to the rest of the coffee shop that was silent except for the last few bars of Harvey's song. "There is relatively good, and good for solos, and good for duets, and good for choral music, and good for classical music, and good for _summer camp revivals of The Music Man,_ and good for—"

"Well he's just good, okay? So shhhhh!" she hissed.

"Fine," he said under his breath. "Compliment people and I get shushed…see if I ever say another word about anything…"

"…_To find me…to find me_…" Harvey finished, strumming a last drawn out chord and opened his eyes. He scanned the applauding audience, smiling proudly, but never met Del's gaze. "Alright, that was…dramatic. Sorry…um…on to something a little more chipper…?"

"Chipper?" Blaine whispered to Del, who replied with a kick to the shins under the table.

"Um…it's older, but I heard it on the radio the other day…so I figure it's still popular right?" He paused for a few seconds and received a few affirmative sounds from the crowd—including a hoot from Del—before looking back at his guitar. "Alright…enjoy."

"He's fifteen, what's his definition of an 'older' song?" Blaine asked, taking another long sip of his coffee.

"Would you shut—!"

"_This is the story of a girl, who cried a river and drowned the whole world. And while she looks so sad in photographs, I absolutely lover her! When she smiles_…!" Bopping up and down on the balls of his feet, Harvey continued along.

And he played through that song, and was welcomed with even louder applause.

And he played through another, ("…_Don't you ever, ever feel, like you're less than, less than perfect! Pretty, pretty please_…!") and the crowd only seemed more enthused.

"Maroon five…" Blaine muttered at the end of his fourth song ("…_And she will be loved…and she will be loved_…"). "His falsetto is…" but he never finished the sentence, instead ending it with a shrug and a sort of disgruntled huff of air.

If his leg wasn't bruised before, it was then.

After a song introduced quickly with, "And because I'm the only guy I know that listens to Josh Groban…" that summoned an awed statement about vocal range out of Blaine, Harvey was almost done.

Almost.

"Alright, everybody, I love playing for you all so much, but I only have one song left. And…I can't do it by myself…"

Del's chin dropped as Harvey met her eyes.

"I don't know how many of you know the play The Music Man, but I'm going to be in a production of it in a couple weeks. This may mean nothing to most of you, but I'm playing Harold and my Marian"—he smiled widely and blushed a little—is sitting out in the audience right now."

Blaine almost choked on his tongue. "He's smooth. I'll give him that."

"And if she would be so kind as to join me up here…" He laughed a little. "It would be really, really great."

Del just blinked at him and shrugged her shoulders in question.

"'Till There Was You'," he said right into the microphone, still smiling.

It was almost like her feet had a mind of their own as they walked her up to the microphone next to Harvey.

He began to strum familiar chords. "Now," he said into the mic. "This is Del, and I really, really like her and…this song is clichéd and sappy…but it's perfect."

"And this is Harvey and I like him, too," Del said without thinking.

"Now," Harvey continued, after he stopped a fit of giddy laughter. "In the play, this song is all about her, but since this is my show, I get to sing the first verse."

"And I'm gonna let him, because I'm pretty much scared witless right now."

Out of the corner of her eye, Del could just barely see Blaine, smiling widely and shaking his head.

Harvey took a deep breath. "_There were bells on the hill, but I never heard them ringing, no I never heard them at all, 'til there was you_." He smiled again. "_There were birds in the sky, but I never saw them winging. No I never saw them at all, 'til there was you. Then there was music and wonderful roses They tell me in sweet fragrant meadows of dawn and dew._" Casually, he nodded to Del and she took the microphone in her hands.

"_There was love all around, but I never heard it singing. No I never heard it at all, 'til there was you. Then there was music and wonderful roses, they tell me in sweet fragrant meadows of dawn and dew_…"

There was a brief moment, as Harvey strummed out the instrumental written for a full orchestra, where Del wanted nothing more than to hug him. Unfortunately, the guitar in his arms was only her first obstacle…her brother, watching her like a hawk from the very first row of tables, was the second.

Finally, Harvey nudged her again and they both took a breath. Together, they sang out the final verse of the song they had both come to love. "_There was love all around, but I never heard it singing. No I never heard it at all, 'til there was you…'Til there was you_."

Before the rest of the shop burst into thunderous applause, Del heard the sound of chair legs scraping on linoleum and single hoot from the first row. When she looked out to the audience, Blaine was standing up, alone in the crowd, beaming with pride and slightly misty-eyed, clapping frantically.

When she and Harvey left the stage, he found them and offered a hand to Harvey and whispering a low, and sincere, "I approve," to Del.

**I'm sorry it took me so long to update! Was it worth it? Do you have any recommendations? What do you want more of? Less of? Is my OC bothering anyone yet? TELL ME ANYTHING!**

**And a humungous THANK YOU to 'I-gotta-gay' on Tumblr (whose FanFiciton name I either forget or never knew) for being so interested in my story!**

**And an equally large GREETINGS to LittleLostSheep for absolutely making my day with her reviews!**

**Have a great day/night/evening/afternoon because I have readers in different time zones! (this blows my mind btw)**

_**THANK YOU!**_


	24. Thunder

**Now that Harvey has won the approval of Blaine (which admittedly took some work) I've decided to give him a little vacation. That…and I've gotten some reviews from my readers saying that they're missing their guy. So, I give you this lovely new fic. I started this a while ago, but just got to finishing it now. I like it. It…shed some light on things. **

Summer storms happen. In the middle of July, it can be bright and beautiful one minute, and the next, fifty miles per hour winds and blinding rain can be shaking your house to the core. Thunder and lightning can be raging across the sky, and power lines can be ripped from their poles before you can even blink. And sometimes, even the most mature, level-headed, courageous people can be curled up in a blanket on the couch, trying to drown out the sounds of the storm with their iPhones.

At ten-thirty that night, the perfect summer storm was blowing through the town of Westerville, Ohio, a particularly strong cell passing right through the Anderson's neighborhood. And within the Anderson home sat a curly-haired teenager, hunched over an iPod, flinching every time lighting flashed or thunder rolled. Wrapped in a blanket, the quivering lump of a person refused to look up from the weather channel live-streaming on the screen in front of them, as flashes of reds and purples continued to pop up around the town, or remove the ear-buds—currently playing unusually heavy rock music—from their ears.

"Hey, B—Oh for Pete's sake," Del began as she rounded the corner to her living room. "This is pathetic, dude."

There was no response.

Sighing, she made her way over to the couch and sat down heavily next to her brother, making him jump.

"Del, go away," he snarled.

"Oh, c'mon. It's just thunder." She paused as a particularly loud crash boomed overhead. "Nothing to be afraid of. Grow up."

"I am not _afraid_ of thunder," he snapped, glaring at her. "I'm just…cautious."

"You're inside a house. How much more cautious can you be?" She noticed the phone in his hand, blinking with orange and red spots, and sighed. "You know, you could do something drastic like turn on the weather channel."

He pretended not to hear her.

"And I don't think having those things in your ears is helping you. If anything, I'd say it's making you more…_conductive_." She smiled slyly as he ripped the buds from his ears and set his phone down on the coffee table next to him.

He crossed his arms and stared at her, his brow furrowed. "Did you want something?"

"Oh! Yeah, um, did Mom ever call?"

"Yeah. The trip is going great. And apparently, the weather in Houston is"—he flinched as another roll of thunder shook the house—"fantastic."

"Hmm." She nodded slowly. "Well, I'll be in my room."

"Yeah…nice…abandonment…" Blaine grumbled as she stood up and made for the stairs.

"You'll be f—" And then the lights went out.

And it had been a long time since Del had heard Blaine curse like that.

"Dude, just go to bed or something!" Del suggested as she pulled out her own phone to light her way up the stairs.

"Yeah right!" Blaine's voice chimed from the darkness.

"Fine. I am, though."

"It's only Saturday night."

"Tech rehearsals start next week. I need to sleep while I can." She started up the stairs. "G'night."

"G'night."

Del hadn't even made it to the top of her stairs when a terrible crash called her back down.

When she rounded the corner back into the living room, she found Blaine on his knees in front of a cupboard by the television and his phone clenched in his teethe, the dim glow it produced revealing a dozen or so candles on the floor surrounding him. He was clumsily trying to shove a few of them back inside…and failing miserably.

"What are you doing?" she sighed.

"I'm tryin' to get a lil' light in 'ere okay?" he mumbled around the device in his mouth.

"Um…and the fact that there's like, four flashlights in the kitchen _never_ crossed your mind?"

Once again, a string of swears fell from Blaine's mouth.

Del couldn't help but giggle. "Admit it: you'd be lost without me."

"Whatever," he mumbled, rolling his eyes, as he tried to shove the rest of the candles back into the cupboard.

Del walked carefully through the dark kitchen and grabbed two flashlights from the shelf above the refrigerator. When she returned to the living room, Blaine had taken a seat back on the couch and was toying with his phone.

"So. What's up?" she asked sarcastically, flicking the lights on and setting them on the coffee table.

Blaine looked at her again. "I'm"—another crack of thunder interrupted him, and caused him to tense—"pathetic, aren't I?"

"Nah." Her eyes found the phone in his hands. "Kurt like thunder?"

"He loves it," he sighed.

"So why are you wasting time being pathetic to me? Be pathetic to your boyfriend!" She threw her hands up. It seemed obvious to her.

"He's in Michigan on a family trip, visiting his grandmother. His dad has declared it a phone-free trip."

"Oh, I see."

Thunder rolled again, and Blaine closed his eyes tightly.

"Bowling angels," Del said casually, yawning a little.

"What?" Blaine asked, raising an eyebrow curiously.

"Mom used to tell us that thunder was just angels bowling. Remember?" She cocked her head and smiled.

Blaine let out a little '_pfft_' of air and crossed his legs on the couch as the wind howled against the house.

"Or it could just be millions of tons of hot and cold air clashing together in the upper atmosphere, the friction of which creates enough energy to combust the air particles, heating the air to temperatures comparable to the surface of the sun." She smirked as Blaine wrinkled his nose uncomfortably. "And if one should be hit by said air particles, their very bones could be melted and—"

"Lalalalala!" Blaine chanted, his fingers in his ears. "Fine! Bowling angels! Just, stop talking."

Del laughed. "On that happy note, I'm off to bed."

Blaine nodded, clenching his fists as the room lit up with lightning again.

"It's alright, you know," Del sighed, stealing one of the flashlights. "We all have our fears. At least yours is rational."

"You don't have any irrational fears, Del," he said flatly.

"Elevators? Moths?" She shrugged, her point made.

"Those are perfectly reasonable."

"So is thunder," she said gently.

"I'm not af—"

"No one cares." And she bounded up the stairs to her room.

Later that night she heard the familiar sound of an electronic ring tone.

"_Kurt, I thought your dad said no phone_…?" She heard Blaine ask from down in the living room. "_Well I'm fine…Yeah, power went out…Don't be silly…Del's a help…A little…No, not really_…" There was a long pause where Del could have sworn he had hung up, but then he said something that made her feel better about a lot of things. "…_It's just angels bowling…Your Mom, too…? Yes, I'm sure I'm fine…How's your grandmother…? Sounds great…I love you, too…I'll see you soon…Good night_…"

And by then, the storm had passed and there was a smattering of stars outside of her window as Del fell asleep.

**Why do all of my endings suck? Why is their mom never home? Why does Blaine cuss like a sailor when he's afraid? The world may never know…**

**Please review!**


	25. Rebel

There are very few situations either Blaine's looks or charm could not weasel himself out of. That is, there would be, if he ever did anything that needed weaseling. Because he didn't. Because he spent the majority of his 'trouble-making years' learning how to play a guitar, and when he was finally in an environment where he could be fully influenced by guys his own age, they were all goody-little-two-shoes, well-educated, well-groomed…_wholesome_ guys.

Which made for a very _wholesome _Blaine. Which made for some tense moments the second Del learned what rebellion was.

**~x~**

"Are you crazy?" he screamed, furrowing his brow in disbelief.

"No, I'm thirteen. Mom said I can't trick-or-treat anymore, so I'm doing mischief night." Del crossed her arms and glared him down.

Mischief night 2009 would forever live in infamy within the Anderson home: Mr. and Mrs. Anderson would insist that they'd be home by ten—and then have the charity dinner run really, really, really late; thirteen year old Del would insist that she was old enough to go and that Lori was going too and that she wouldn't do anything _really_ bad; and fifteen year old Blaine would do the first in a long and almost never ending string of authoritative actions.

"No," he said very firmly, moving to stand in between Del and the front door. "Mom and Dad would never allow it, so there is no way in hell that I can."

Del let out an indignant huff of air. "Mom and Dad aren't home." She took a step towards him and scowled, getting right in his face. "And I'm going out."

"What exactly are you planning to do anyway? Egg something? TP someone's house? This is stupid, Del. Really, _really_ stupid." He grabbed her by the shoulders and backed her towards the couch.

"I'm going to bike to Lori's house and _her brother_ is going to set us up with everything we need, because _her brother_ is cool." She pulled away from his grasp and plopped heavily down on to the couch.

"Yeah. Cool. That's why he was arrested _four times_ this summer?" Blaine raised an eyebrow in speculation and Del sighed, rolling her eyes.

"We're not gonna get arrested," she snarled, refusing to look at him.

"But you don't know that. If you want, I'll…I'll call Lori and say that I was the jerk that kept you from going out. Okay? Would that fix this little problem?"

"No!" Del spat.

"Then I don't know what to tell you!" He threw his hands up in exasperation. "I will sit in front of that door until Mom and Dad get home because—"

"Because why?" she hollered. "I'm old enough to take care of myself, Blaine! I don't need you to hover over me! Mom and Dad do that enough!"

"No! You're not old enough! You're thirteen and impulsive and too independent for your own good and _tiny_!" He took a deep breath. "And if I let you go out there tonight, either you're going to get hurt or in trouble or _I'm _going to get in trouble."

Del was still looking down, scowling and fiddling with the bracelet on her wrist.

"I don't want _any_ of that to happen. If you got hurt, I…Mom and Dad would never trust me again, and I probably wouldn't be able to live with myself." He sighed heavily and crossed his arms.

"I don't know why you're so convinced I'm gonna get hurt," she mumbled.

"Because I know better than you—_heck_, I probably know better than Lori's delinquent brother, that there are people out there that will hurt you for no other reason than the fact that you're there and an open opportunity." He looked down at his hands, balled into fists, and worked very hard at relaxing them before continuing. "They don't need reasons, Del."

She was quiet. A part of her knew that he was right—and had evidence to prove it—but another part of her wanted to bolt from where she sat on the couch and make a beeline for the door.

Finally, she looked up at him, standing a few feet from the door. His chest was puffed out in a deliberate attempt to look stronger, his arms were crossed and his eyes were narrowed, but his mop of hair, sticking out in curly tufts at odd angles detracted from his efforts at authority.

"Fine," she said quietly. "Just let me call Lori."

Blaine kept an eye on her as she stood from the couch and made her way to the phone in the kitchen. After she hung up, she headed for the stairs with a quick, "goodnight" and disappeared into her room.

Blaine fell asleep on the couch that night, full of something like pride…at least until his parents came home and shuffled him off to bed.

**~x~**

"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, _I hate you so much right now you don't even know_!" Blaine hollered through his teeth as he leaned up against a tree on the edges of the Westerville town green, panting like he had just finished a marathon.

"If you hate me so much," Del said breathlessly, also struggling to catch her breath. "Then why are you smiling right now?"

He was silent, only smiling wider and continuing to try and catch his breath. "Did you at least get it?"

Del held up a blue pendant on a silver chain and smiled slyly. "I got it."

Earlier that day, the green had been covered in tents and small farm stands, bustling with people ready to sell their products or whatever they had picked from their gardens that day. Del had only gone because Lori had promised that a guy from school would be there at his dad's stand…and that said guy had a crush on Del.

So Del had slipped her mom's topaz necklace out of her drawer and picked out a nice top and joined Lori at the green. And guess who wasn't there.

And guess what chain had broken the second Del had arrived. And guess who didn't notice until she got back home. And guess who she had talked into going with her to find it.

"Why the hell is our town spending money on paying cops to patrol the green at one in the morning anyway?" Blaine asked, finally speaking clearly.

"I don't know…maybe to keep stupid kids off the grounds." Del pocketed the necklace and stole a glance around the tree to the open field and could just see a cop car driving off in the opposite direction.

"If we get caught, I swear Del I will—"

"Shh!" she hissed. "We're not gonna get caught. Come on." She darted out from behind the tree and ducked back under a bush—Blaine on her heels—and grabbed her bike.

"It's amazing you found it, you know. The chances of that are like, one in—"

"A lot. One in a lot chances. I know." She mounted her bike and started off down the road. "Can we just be thanking the fates or whatever right now? Because that was some kind of higher power stuff going on right there."

Blaine snorted back a laugh. "Yeah. Fates be praised, alright."

When they rounded the final block to their street, and turned down their driveway, they both held their breath.

They crept up to the front door and Blaine took what felt like an eternity to open it. Once they were inside, though, they both collapsed on the couch with heavy sighs.

"I feel so alive!" Del whispered, pulling the necklace out of her pocket and waving it in the air.

"I feel like I'm gonna die…" Blaine groaned, rubbing his eyes and cracking his neck dramatically.

There were a few moments of silence in which either of them could have fallen asleep.

"You owe me," he finally said, his expression stony. "You owe me big time." He poked her hard in the arm.

"Fine! Whatever you want, whenever you want. Deal. Now," she stood up slowly and stretched. "I'm going to pop this back onto Mom's dresser"—she shook the necklace in her hand—"and then I'm going to bed."

"I hate you!" Blaine called Del climbed the stairs to her room.

"Love you, too!"

**~x~**

Odd and unexpected things happened when Lori came for sleepovers. One could just be walking down the hall, minding his own business, and a hand could pop out from Del's room, grab him by the collar of his shirt, and drag him inside the 'dragon's den.'

Few left the dragon's den unscathed. Blaine was one of the lucky to have not only lived through one capture, but several.

Even Del would admit that her room could be scary some days: the walls were an unsettling shade of green—that probably could be pretty if she wanted them to be; the floor was covered wall to wall in a deep brown shag carpet; the windows were concealed by heavy, wooden blinds, and there was stuff _absolutely everywhere._ He avoided walking past the door after midnight most days.

"Go get us the phonebook," Del commanded after tossing Blaine into her room and standing in front of the door.

"And why would I do that?" he asked, straightening his shirt.

"Because," Lori chimed in from where she sat on Del's bed. "We're gonna have fun."

"No," he said plainly, crossing his arms. "Get it yourselves. I refuse to be involved with whatever wrongdoings are about to transpire here."

Del rolled her eyes. "Please? If I go down there looking for the phonebook, Mom will get suspicious. If you go down there looking for the phonebook, she won't even bat an eye. You're too goody-goody to do anything! She'll probably think that you're looking up the number to the animal shelter to change your hours or something."

Lori stifled a laugh and Blaine looked no less than disgruntled.

"I resent that," he said indignantly. "I am not a 'goody-goody'!"

Del smiled slyly and opened the door behind her, raising an eyebrow in skepticism. "Prove it."

With a huff, Blaine marched out of the room and down the hall, in the opposite direction of where Del knew the phonebook to be.

"Darn it," Del sighed, swinging the door shut and taking a seat on her bed next to a pouting Lori, then flopping to stare at the ceiling.

"Now what?" Lori sighed, laying back, too.

"I don't know. We could watch more prom proposal videos on YouTube…" Lori shook her head uninterestedly. "We could…have another Angry Birds marathon?"

"You're brother sucks. What are we supposed to do now?" Lori groaned.

"I dunno. We could—" but she was cut off by a sharp rap on her door.

Lori sprung up. "You don't think he squealed on us, do you?"

Del, too, sat up and headed for the door, grumbling under her breath. "He better not have."

But when she opened the door, she came face to face with her brother, wearing an expression that read somewhere along the lines of mutinous, holding a phonebook in one hand and his cell phone in the other.

"Um," he stuttered. "How do you pick who to call?"

And once again, he was dragged into the room by the neck of his t-shirt by an overzealous Del as a giggling Lori looked on.

And less than an hour later he would be thrown out of the room, Del huffing with exasperation and Lori no more pleased, deemed forever as the worst crank caller in history.

**I like it. Gives Del…depth. Please, please, please, please review! I love all of you so much and I have so many ideas in the works! Please review!**


	26. Baked

**Nothing but cutesy, I swear. **

When Blaine came home from work that Saturday, he was not expecting to walk into a battlefield of flour, sugar, butter, and chocolate.

But he did.

"Del," he coughed as he passed through a cloud of flour. "What the _hell_ are you doing?"

"I'm making Mom a cake for her birthday," she said through gritted teeth as she stuck a wooden spoon into a bowl and started to stir heatedly.

Blaine made his way across the kitchen carefully, noting certain things as he passed: The counter was covered in foodstuffs from one end of the room to the other; there were at least a dozen eggs smattered across the room (some intact, some not so much); the oven was on at a ridiculous five hundred and twenty five degrees; and there was probably twice the amount of ingredient in Del's hair than there was in the bowl she was stirring.

"And we're out of boxed cake mix?" Blaine asked, raising an eyebrow and plucking a piece of eggshell from her shoulder.

She snapped around to glare at him, revealing cocoa powder streaked across her cheek. "Baking is _relaxing_," she snarled.

He held his hands up as if to say 'don't shoot' and took a step back. "Alright then. Would you mind if I just—?"

"Yes! Yes, I mind! Don't touch anything! Just…back away and ensure that you won't be baked into this cake yourself!" Her eye twitched as she said it, and her arm never stopped stirring.

"I won't touch anything, I promise. I just want to turn down the oven before it blows up. Is that okay?" He pointed to the corner of the kitchen where the oven sat.

"Fine! Turn down the oven! Then go away!" She set down the bowl with a sharp thud on the counter and looked back to her cookbook. "I'm almost done."

"Um, Del?" Blaine asked, looking over at the sink full of bowls. "How many cakes are you planning to make for Mom?"

"This is my fourth try," she said without skipping a beat. "The first one had salt in it instead of sugar, the second didn't have baking soda—or—baking powder or something like that…so it just kind of sat in the oven and turned into this molten, boiling, chocolate goop, and that last one"—she nodded over her shoulder to two small discs of chocolate cake, still smoldering on their cooling racks—"was the victim of a phone call."

Blaine stared at them, noticing that they were not only covered in black char, but soaking wet. "Do I want to know what happened to them?"

"I was talking to Harvey and didn't hear the timer go off," she continued as she poured the contents of her bowl into two cake pans. "By the time I smelled the smoke, it was either save the cakes, or save the house." She dropped the bowl into the sink and turned around to face Blaine, hands on her hips and eye still twitching. "So I took a glass of water and threw it into the oven."

Blaine just stood there with his mouth hanging open, shocked speechless.

Del, however continued to bustle around the kitchen, rambling on about baking to mostly herself. "And if this batch doesn't work I'm screwed because we're out of eggs." She slid the pans into the oven and kicked the door shut. "…flour…sugar…eggs," she listed off to herself. "…butter…baking soda _and_ powder—what's with that anyway?" She crossed her arms and looked at Blaine, who was still frozen. "I mean, what the hell is the difference between baking _soda_ and baking _powder_? And why do we need _both_?"

Blaine blinked a little, finally coming back to his senses. "You've never baked anything in your entire life! Why the hell did you decide that today, right now, _unsupervised_ would be the time to start?" He threw his hands up in exasperation. "And look at this kitchen!" He leaned on the counter only to jump back, wiping something bright yellow from his hands onto his jeans. "Mom is going to kill you!"

"I'll clean it!" she protested, but Blaine didn't seem to hear.

"I didn't even think we had this much flour in the house!" He brushed off a section of the counter, sending a puff of white dust into the air.

"I said I'll clean it!" Del hollered, setting a time for the cake. "Just relax and grab me the roll of paper towels please."

"Fine. But that's it. I'm not helping you out of this one. This,"—he waved his hand around, gesturing to particularly messy spots—"is not my problem."

"I get it. I'll clean. Just, hand me the freakin' paper towels!" She moved her hands to rub her eyes, but decided against it and lowered them back to her sides, after noticing the egg yolk dried onto her knuckles.

"Here," he said, handing her the roll. "Just—don't—I…" He sighed, looking at his little sister, dusted in a layer of white, rubbing desperately at her face with a paper towel, and shook his head.

"What?" she snapped at him, her hair bouncing a little as she spoke.

Just then, Zoey popped out from under the kitchen table, her brown head also dusted in flour, wagging her tail at Blaine.

"Oh," Del whimpered. "I must have woken her up. She was snoring just a few minutes ago."

Blaine's glance moved back to his sister and he sighed again, rolling up his sleeves. "I forgot it was Mom's birthday," he admitted, offering a hand out towards Del. "So since you're the perfect child this year, I figure the only appropriate thing to do would be to…um…_salvage_ the kitchen."

Del just smiled wearily and tossed him the roll of paper towels.

**Did you like it? Can you guess what I was doing this afternoon? (hint: BAKING!) Please review, it means so, so, so, so much to me. I love all of my readers! Goodnight all!**


	27. Piano Lesson

**Oh, if there was ever a time where I thought that Del was me…**

In the very back of the Anderson home is a room that the family likes to call the library, but is really just a bedroom that Mrs. Anderson converted into a place for her to put her work stuff and everything else that has nowhere else to go. On the back wall of the room was an old upright piano.

Mrs. Anderson, as the good mother she is, signed her children up for piano lessons the moment they turned six. Blaine practiced daily right through tenth grade and was the apple of his teacher's eye. Del refused to practice, and dropped it for drawing when she was ten.

And that is why Blaine was almost knocked over in shock when he came home one day to the sound of clumsy plinking from the library.

When he opened the door to the room, he found Del's laptop open on his mother's desk, the printer still on, and Del fumbling to get a few sheets of newly printed sheet music upright on the music stand.

"Uh, what are you doing?" he asked, turning off the printer and glancing at the computer screen.

"I'm trying to play the piano, okay?" she shot back, finally setting the papers straight in front of her. "So if you don't mind giving me a minute, you're not the only one who can get all sappy and emotional over a song."

"But…" he sputtered. "Why?"

"Because I need a release!" she practically screamed. "Because I have this lump of feelings sitting here"—she tapped her chest with a single finger—"and I don't know how to get it out."

"And, you couldn't just play it on your iPod or something?" He sat on the edge of the desk and rose and eyebrow at her.

"No!" she snapped. "I need to put energy into something, okay?"

"Fine," he said, sliding off the desk and backing towards the door. "Have…fun." And with that, he stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him. He was almost to the staircase when a terrible clang stopped him in his tracks.

He waited, then, to make sure everything was fine before starting for his room again, only to be stopped by another crash of keys followed by a short, angry explicative.

"Is everything…uh…_intact_ down there?" he called over his shoulder.

There was a second of shuffling papers and muffled swears before Del answered quietly, "Yeah…pretty much."

With a hesitant sigh, he started back up the stairs, backed by a slow, awkward rendition of a vaguely familiar tune.

Unfortunately, the fatal flaw of most—if not all—novice pianists, is that they confuse playing louder with playing better. And that is just not the case.

So after about fifteen minutes of increasingly loud and decreasingly quality playing, he marched back down the stairs and into the library, his head pounding.

Del was sitting cross-legged on the piano bench, her nose practically pressed to the music, her left hand abnormally high on the keyboard and her right hand holding a rapidly ticking digital metronome.

"Uh…Del…how's it going so far?" he asked cautiously, crossing the room to the bench slowly.

"Fine!" she snapped, as she pounded out another sour chord. "…Remind me: is a flat up or down?"

"Down."

"Okay, and that's the one that looks like a number sign, right?"

"No," he said gingerly taking another step towards her.

Once again she spat out a few mumbled curses and raised her hands from the keys to shuffle the papers in front of her. "Hold this," she commanded, reaching the hand with the metronome out behind her and waving it a little bit.

Blaine grabbed the device as he was asked and flicked it off, sending the room into a comfortable silence and settling his nerves.

Then Del started to play again.

It was a base line of slightly off-key chords, overlapped by a slow and unsteady melody.

He cringed a little and put up his hand. "Stop…stop, stop, please…" He moved to sit next to her on the bench before being shot an absolutely toxic glance from Del.

"Um…" he coughed. "May I?"

With a sigh and a slight roll of her eyes, she scooted over and made room for him to sit next to her on the bench. He took a long look of the music and Del snickered.

"If you think you can make sense of it, then by all means have a go, but I think that whoever edited this version must have been—" but she was cut of as Blaine set his hands on the keys and played a series of perfect chords.

Del narrowed her eyes and curled lip in disgust. "Screw you," she hissed.

Blaine just laughed and kept playing, barely paying attention to the score in front of him. "You're the one that quit," he said absentmindedly.

"That devil woman drove me away!" she protested.

"Mrs. Squires was not a devil woman. She was the nicest teacher I ever had." Blaine continued to play away.

"Yeah, to you. Because you were perfect at every song she gave you and practiced like a mad man." She crossed her arms and glared hatefully at Blaine's flying fingers.

"You could have been just as good if you practiced even a little bit," he said, huffing.

"I had more important things to do," she said under her breath.

"Like what?" He lifted his hands from the keys for a moment to turn the page, but before he could set them back down, she grabbed his wrists.

"Stop that, you're scaring me," she said seriously. He laughed again, to which she replied, "And stop laughing at me! I've just got…feelings, okay?"

"Whoa…teenage girl moment…" he breathed, resulting in an elbow to his ribs. "Alright…" he coughed, rubbing his side. "Sorry…" He took a deep breath, wincing a little. "Feelings?"

Slowly, she turned over her right hand to reveal a small message written on her palm in delicate, black letters.

"It's a project we're doing at camp. Everyone partners up and writes a little inspirational thing on their partner's hand. This is what Harvey came up with." She smiled a little and looked determinedly at the sheet music just a few inches from her face. "And I believe every word of it."

Blaine took her hand and moved it so he could see it better. "'Music is what feelings sound like,'" he read flatly, before the message hit him. "Oh," he said, blinking a little. "I see."

"Yeah," Del sighed, pulling back her hand. "And it makes perfect sense for him to write that and it makes perfect sense for you to get it…but it just doesn't work for me."

"Del, you're putting on a musical. _You _are plenty musical. You just—"

"No. I sing what's on the sheet in front of me. I don't _make_ music like—"

"What do you think singing is?" he said with unexpected sternness. "I'll remind you that I'm in an acapella choir…" His tone was indignant and he raised an eyebrow as he stared her down. "So I don't want to hear anything about instruments being more important."

Del rolled her eyes.

"And I'll tell you something else. You need to use your energy to get rid of your…_wad of emotion_ or whatever with stuff you're good at." He closed the lid of the piano as she mumbled '_lump of feelings, jackass_' under her breath. "Preferably closer to an open word document than to the piano?" He smiled a cautious smile at her.

"But…" She held up her hand.

"Whistle while you work!" he said, throwing his hands up and laughing wearily. "Just, don't let this drive you nuts, okay?"

She took a deep breath. "I think it's pre-show emotion or something. The entire cast is either laughing hysterically or sobbing all day long."

Blaine furrowed his brow and just stared at her. "Um…that's…good?"

"Yeah, pretty much." She nodded, her mind somewhere else, and slid off the bench.

"Del?" Blaine asked, a sly smile creeping across his face.

"Yeah?" She closed her laptop and unplugged it from the printer.

"Less than a week 'til opening night."

"OH SHIT!" she hollered, a wide smile on her face.

"Feel better?"

She took a long, cleansing breath. "You have no idea." And with that she started out the door.

"Wait, Del…Just out of curiosity…" He hesitated for a second and Del turned around, an eyebrow raised in wondering anticipation.

"What?"

"I was just wondering…what did you write on Harvey's hand?"

"Oh, you know me. I'm not that creative." She shrugged a little bit.

"Okay, now you're just fishing for compliments," he said flatly.

"True, but I really wasn't that original. And it was very simple and his was so much better and all day better ones have popped into my head but it's Sharpie so it's not like we can change it or—"

"Are you going to tell me what it is or not?" He spun around on the bench to face her.

"I'm thinkin' not, now that I think about—"

"Del!" he laughed.

"Fine!" She sighed. "I'm going to admit something to you first, though." Blaine's face went blank in surprise. "A few months ago, I was looking for something that I can't even remember now, and for some reason or another I thought it would be in your room. So I go in there and I'm looking around and I found a really old looking sticky note stuck on your bookshelf. And it had a little message on it and I really liked it, so I kept it in my head…and now it's written on Harvey in permanent marker, too."

Blaine blinked a few times. "Um…what did it say?"

"Courage."

**AND NOW I CAN BREATH AGAIN! I am so sorry it's taken me so long to post! I am going through exactly what Del is right now: show opening in four days (OH SHIT!) and an emotional rollercoaster every single day. Unfortunately, I live don't live with Blaine, I live with a fifteen year old Finn who couldn't give a flying fudge about my show. **

***Sigh* Thank you for letting me get that out. I hope you liked this story and it would mean the world to me if you'd review it.**

**Have a lovely day/evening/I can't keep up with everyone and their time zones I just know it's dark here. **


	28. Solla Sollew

**If you have never seen 'Seussical the Musical' I advise you to YouTube it as soon as possible. For now, though, just add this: /watch?v=Df3V8Eddu_E after the address for YouTube. Just listening to this four minute song will enhance your reading experience for this chapter incredibly. **

If there is one thing I've learned after living with Del for over fifteen years, it's that you can never be sure about a girl's emotions. There is no way to guess what they'll be. There is no way to assume; no way to calculate; no way to judge. They are what they are and there is no way you can ever change them or make them go away.

And you're an idiot if you think you can.

When I turned the corner down the little side street Del and her friends hung out with after camp every day, I wasn't expecting much more then the usual. I was expecting longer goodbyes and maybe a hug here and there between people who were particularly close, but not a whole lot more than that.

Oh, how I was wrong.

When I rounded that corner, I found a group of maybe ten kids—mostly girls Del's age—with their arms wrapped around each other in the tightest group hug I've ever seen. Taken back a little, I just drove by and parked on the side of the road like I had dozens of times before. Del didn't even seem to notice.

Hesitantly, I got out of the car and sat on the hood, just trying to figure out exactly what was going on, why it was happening, and most importantly, how long it would take.

"…and we'll talk over the year, right? And we'll see each other," I heard Del choke, and all of a sudden, I noticed that every one of them was crying.

All of them. They were all standing on the street corner, outside of a popular coffee shop, holding on to each other like their lives depended on it, and crying like someone had died.

There was a round of affirmative noises and stifled sobs.

"I just—" but she stopped talking the second she pulled away from a hug and noticed me. There was a moment of silence when she just stared in my direction, almost unbelievingly, as if trying to will me not to be there, and then she let out another strangled sob. "I've"—she sniffed hard and wiped her eyes—"I've got to go guys."

Once again, the group rippled with sounds of sadness, and people reached out to give final hugs.

I wanted nothing more than to disappear. Even though I knew that this would have happened no matter who it was that picked her up, something inside of me kept screaming that this was my fault. I was the one who would be driving away from that corner, that group of people, that coffee shop, with Del in the car…and my heart ached just to think about it.

"Bye, guys," she sniffed. "Bye…I love you guys…I—" but she was cut off when a short, skinny, dark haired boy shoved his way around the crowd and squeezed her tight around the middle.

"Bye, Del," Harvey said in a voice barely louder than a whisper. Even from where I sat, I could see clear tear stains on his cheeks.

To be quite honest, I wasn't thrilled about how tight that hug was, nor about how long it lasted, but the hopeless romantic somewhere inside me let me know that I couldn't have stopped that hug even if I really wanted to.

"I love you guys," she said over his shoulder, making the group rumble once again. Then she took a small step away from Harvey and looked at him. "I really, really love you guys."

His chin dropped a little bit, and his shoulders rose, quivering as he took in another shaky breath.

"Bye, Harvey," Del said quickly, before turning on her heels and heading briskly down the sidewalk towards me.

"Hey," I said cautiously. "How was…today?"

"Can we just…?" She grabbed me by the arm and tugged me towards the car. "Can we just go home, please?"

By the time I had sat down and buckled my seat belt, Del was already fumbling through my glove compartment for tissues.

"It's okay, you know," I said, finally pulling away from the curb and heading down the road. "You were obviously really close with these guys. I get it. You'll feel better eventually. You've just got to give it time. I know you'll be able to move—"

"NO, BLAINE!" she screamed, making me jump. "You don't get it. Imagine…" She took a deep, quivering breath and sniffed. "Imagine spending just a month and a half with all of your Warbler buddies, spending every day for six weeks with all of your best friends that understand it when you burst into song over stupid things, and then…" She shrugged her shoulders, but said nothing else, burying her face into a tissue instead.

"I'll admit, that would be really terrible, but it's not like you can't call and text each other and stuff." I sighed, trying to make my attempt at levity a little more convincing. "They aren't going to disappear forever. Cheer—"

"_Imagine_ having met Kurt and spent every day for six weeks with him and then being told not to worry about not having reassurance about the next time you'll see him. Imagine that, Blaine. Just…try." Her voice cracked on the final word, as she turned her head to face out the window, clutching her bag to her chest.

And for some sick, masochistic reason, I did try.

And it hurt to think about.

"I…I'm sorry. You love them. I…I need to shut up. I just need to—"

"Remember when Mom took us to see Seussical?" she said airily, almost as if she wasn't talking to me. "Do you remember that show?"

"Of course," I said instantly. "I love that sh—"

"I remember every bit of that show. Even thought I was only eight. You know my favorite song?" She took a pause, and I couldn't tell if they wanted a reply or not.

"Um…no. I'm sorry but I don't remember your favorite song."

"Solla Sollew," she said her eyes still staring out the window. "Do you remember how it went?"

"I…uh…" I wracked my brain, trying to remember songs from the show. "I'm sorry, I can't say I do."

Then in the voice that had won her the role of Marian, the voice that rang through the house when she was happy, the voice that could sound both strong and delicate, airy and reassured, and uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time, she began to sing a vaguely familiar tune.

"_There's a faraway land, so the stories all tell, somewhere beyond the horizon. If we can find it, all will be well, troubles there are few. Someday we'll go, too…Solla Sollew…Solla Sollew_…"

It was moment like these that made me want to strangle her when she said anything about her voice being bad, or even that I was better. It was moments like this that made me wish she could hear her. It was moments like this that made me believe that—as much as she shot me down about the idea—that she would be perfect for Broadway.

She kept singing in her clear, pretty, perfect-for-stage voice, and was working around the occasional snivel, and made it about halfway through the song, until…

"…_They say breezes are warm there and people_—" The words caught in her throat. Coughing, she began again, only a little louder and only a little more determined. "_Breezes are warm there and people are_—"

There are moments where you realize that no matter how much we think we may be in control of out body and what our mind decides to make our body do, there are some things you can't keep yourself from doing.

"_They say breezes are warm there, and people are kind_…" I sang softly, and noticed that she was shaking again. "Um…" I cleared my throat. "Is it something like heaven?" I asked.

There was a long pause, punctuated by sniffing and wiping of eyes before she answered in a small, tired, almost weak voice, "Absolutely."

It was very quiet for what felt like a very long time. Del sat, facing away from me, breathing shakily, a few tears still running down her face, muttering select lyrics of the song to herself.

"I shouldn't be crying," she said abruptly.

"It's okay. You'll miss them a lot. You love them. You had a great time and there's—"

"'Do not cry because it's over, smile because it happened,'" she said very matter-of-factly.

"Who said that?" I asked. The statement seemed familiar, like it had been told to me before, and—possibly—told Del.

"Dr. Seuss," she sighed, and fell right back into her haunting song.

I sighed heavily and gave Del a little half smile, even though she wasn't looking at me. "We all have a Solla Sollew, Del…and I think I found yours."

**So camp ended today. Last night was closing night for our production of The Music Man. I cried like a baby all day, and I cried again while writing this. This is in no way a dramatization or exaggeration. I hope I made you cry, too. **


	29. Gone Jogging

Del had locked herself in her room all day, so when she finally came storming down the stairs, clad in a hoodie and workout pants, Blaine was both relieved and confused.

"Hey," he said casually, looking up from his book.

"I'm going for a jog," she said very definitively, taking a seat on the ottoman in front of him and pulling on a pair of worn sneakers.

"Wait, what?"

"What don't you get?" she asked snidely. "I am going for a jog." And she started towards the door.

"Del, it's eight thirty at night." He set his book down and glanced at the window. "And it's raining."

"I don't care," she tossed over her shoulder as she flew the door open, stepped outside and slammed it behind her.

"DEL!" Blaine screamed, jumping from where he sat on the couch. Dashing after her, he slid on whatever shoes were sitting next to the door, and bolted out into the rain.

Del was just turning out of their driveway when he finally found her in the darkness. Taking a deep breath, he sprinted after her.

"DEL!" he screamed again. She didn't turn around. Even though he could barely see with the rain in his eyes, he pushed on and finally caught up with her.

"Del…" he panted. "Are you crazy?"

"Go away, Blaine!" she yelled back, never looking at him.

"Since…Since when do you…jog?" he breathed.

"Since now. Go home." She kept running, still refusing to look away from the rode in front of her.

"Well…if you're going to jog…you should do it on the right side…of the rode at least…" Blaine suggested sarcastically.

Del came to a stop, looked up and down the road, then crossed it, leaving Blaine standing alone on the opposite side.

"B-but…DEL COME BACK!" And he followed right behind her.

"I said go home, Blaine!" she hollered over her shoulder as he scrambled to catch up with her.

"Del…what's wrong?" he sputtered when he finally caught up to her.

"Why would you think anything is wrong…? Since when do I jog…when something is wrong…?" She too was beginning to pant.

"That's not it…You're not looking at me…You can't make eye contact…when you're upset…" By now he had settled into a pace, and despite the less than perfect conditions, was a little more comfortable.

"I'm fine, Blaine….I would just prefer not to run into a tree…" she said angrily.

"No…you're not fine…You're literally running away from me…What's wrong?"

"BLAINE!" she screamed, coming to a sudden stop and staring at him. "Why are you so convinced that every time I'm less than one hundred percent happy something earth shatteringly terrible happened? Hm?" She threw her hands up. "Am I not allowed to be a little bratty just for once?"

"No, Del, I just—"

"Because maybe I just need to be pissed off for a while! Maybe there's just stuff in the world that has no direct correlation to me right now that just _pisses me off_!" She wiped he hand across her face, pushed a few strands of wet hair form her eyes. "Or maybe, just maybe, something that does directly correlate happened, and it made me upset and stuff! Maybe that could have happened, too, Blaine. And you know what? That would be fine! But you just have to know every little thing!"

"I just want to make sure you're—"

"NOTHING IS WRONG, BLAINE!" she concluded, dropping her head to her hands and rubbing her eyes.

"Okay," he said cautiously. "What's _not_ wrong, then?"

Del just stared at him, her brow furrowed, huffing a little. Blaine stared back. By now his t-shirt was plastered to him and hoes were soaked to the socks. He was quickly growing impatient and cold.

"I…I just…could I tell you later?" she asked, seeming sincere about it. "Could we run some more, then I'll tell you later?"

Blaine just looked at her. Then he looked down the road. Then he looked at his watch. And then he looked up at the dark sky, still pouring down rain. "Uh…yeah. Sure. Uh…let's go."

So they set off down the road, jogging side by side silently. It was odd, he'd have to admit, but even though she never looked his way or said anything, he had never before felt closer to her.

About five minutes later, she came to a stop on a corner, looked around for a bit, took a deep breath, and turned around.

Completely soaked and out of breath, Blaine let out a sigh of relief when Del came to a stop just around the corner from their house.

"Okay," he panted, leaning up against a tree. "How the hell…are you not…like…dead…?"

Del laughed. "I don't just sit around all day, Blaine. I just finished putting on a musical with the choreographer from hell."

"Oh…I see…"

They were quiet for a second.

"Um…Del…?" Blaine began, before she put a hand up to stop him.

"Harvey broke up with me," she said quickly, looking down.

Blaine stood stunned for a moment, before blinking a few times and finally registering what was happening. "Oh…he really just…dumped you?"

Del winced as if in pain. "Not in so many words. We weren't exactly going out and…" she shrugged.

"What exactly happened?" he asked slowly, being very cautious not to assume anything.

"He called me today, and we were just talking and it was cool and then…" she swallowed hard. "He asked if we were 'official,'—whatever the hell that means!—and when I said no, not technically I was all ready for him to be all, 'well, do you want to be?' because that is such a gooberish, Harvey thing to do…but instead…" Del took a deep breath and wiped the rain and hair form her face again. "He sighed—like he was relieved!—and was all 'oh, that's cool' and told me that he met someone…"

Blaine looked horrified. "Oh…Del…I—"

"And I lost ten pounds dancing my ass off. I'm not going to sit home and eat my feelings. So I decided to jog. There? Happy now?"

"Del…No. How could I be happy with you like this? Are you…are you alright?" He took a step towards her and put his hand on her shoulder.

"No," she said indignantly, shrugging him off. "Of course I'm not okay, but what other option do I have? He said I was still one of the best friends he's ever had. He said that I was one of the best artists he's ever met. He said he still really liked me…"

"But…?" Blaine asked.

"But one of the girls from his school saw that he was in a play it turns out she always loved artists." Del rubbed her eyes again, once more pushing strands of hair from her face.

"He's an idiot," Blaine said with an unexpected amount of gusto. "He doesn't deserve you, and he doesn't know what he's missing, and he's gonna regret it someday, and the other girl is probably a slut, and he has no idea how much he'll be missing you in a while, and he wouldn't be doing this if he knew you had a small army of teenage guys at you're disposal, and—"

"Oooo. Sick the Warblers on him," she said with an air of sarcastic cynicism. "Yeah, that'll show him."

"Well it's true. And even if I couldn't get all of them to help me, I'd kick his ass if you wanted me to." His face was scrunched up in concern and he was being completely serious. "I thought he liked you. I thought he really, really, really liked you." His expression was less angry than it was frustrated. "I warned him about hurting you! I did, I really did but he did it anyway!"

"Blaine?" Del asked.

"Yeah?" he replied, still huffing to himself.

"Are _you_ okay?"

He chuckled a little under his breath. "When you told me all about this Harvey guy, I got so nervous that you were going to go and get yourself hurt." He smiled a little. "And then…" He paused for a moment considering whether to tell her about his conversation with Harvey or not—then deciding to throw everything to the wind. "…He told me, straight to my face, how much he liked you. And for some reason, I relaxed for a second thinking that maybe he was just one of those guys that wasn't a total ass."

"Blaine…?"

"But I guess not." He looked at her again, and his eyes said everything. "Sorry. Sorry that I couldn't stop this from happening. Sorry that I can't promise you that it will never happen again. Guys are jerks. All of us. And I officially apologize on behalf of my entire gender for that fact!"

Del honestly laughed that time. "Apology accepted. Except from Harvey."

"Precisely." And instinctively, he grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a tight hug. "Now, are you alright?"

She was standing on the side of the road, soaking wet, emotionally drained, hugging her equally wet brother and he was asking if she was alright? She shook her head. "Still no. But I'm better. I'm really a lot better."

"That's good. I don't like to see you upset." He took a step back and patted her shoulder again. Suddenly, the rain began to let up. "Can we go home now?"

"Yeah." And she started walking towards her driveway.

"Del?" Blaine asked a few minutes later.

"Yes…?"

"I will hurt him. Do you want me to? Because I will."

"Not now. Ask me tomorrow, though."

"Okay."

**UGH! OH, IT FEEL SO GOOD TO HAVE THIS UP AND DONE AND ONLINE AND GOOD AND YAY! **

**Writers' block. And bad. All weekend. It almost hurt how much I wanted to write and couldn't.**

**Side note: Why was it raining? Because you can't tell if you're crying in the rain. **


	30. Wes?

Del absolutely loved to be home alone. She loved how free and independent she felt and she loved the fact that she could do whatever she wanted—within reason—and no one ever needed to know. She loved how she could make the entire house completely quiet or turn on every TV and crank up her music all the way and no one would be able to stop her. She loved just to sit on the couch with Zoey and be able to watch whatever channel she wanted without being whined at or worrying about her mom finding it 'unsuitable.'

In a nutshell, she loved moments like just that lovely summer evening.

But of course the doorbell rang.

So she slid off the couch, sighing, with Zoey under her arm, and made her way to the front of the house. A quick peak out the front window revealed a vaguely familiar car in the driveway, so she pressed her ear up to the door and asked, "Who is it?"

There was rumble of muttering from the other side. Del cracked the door slightly and looked out, only to be met with the back of at least one teenage guy.

"Who is it?" she asked more confidently. This time, a familiar voice answered.

"Is Blaine home?" the boy sighed. "It's Wes."

Del opened the door and stared at him. His hair was uncharacteristically disheveled and his clothes were unsettlingly casual. "Uh…hi, Wes," Del said, leaning on the door awkwardly. "No, Blaine's out. Um…why didn't you just call him?"

He hemmed and hawed for a moment, then answered weakly, "Because I'd rather talk in person for once." The way he said it was almost like a question. "All of us and this technology…we're becoming disconnected from each other and there is nothing worse than being disconnected from people. So that's why I'm here. I need…" He waved his hands in the air, searching for a word, then took a deep breath. "Do you know when he's gonna be back?"

Del blinked a few times. "Um…he's out with Kurt. It could be a while." Immediately, Wes's expression went from uncomfortable to downright pained. "Wes…is there anything I can do?"

He looked at her for a minute, then sighed. "You've had a boyfriend before, right?"

"Yes…" she said slowly, trying to ignore the slight pain in her chest while trying to piece things together. "Oh, god," she groaned, raising an eyebrow at him. "Are you trying to come out or something?"

Wes took a step back and threw his hands up, shaking his head. "Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no! I was just wondering if you've ever been in a relationship before." He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "God, this is stupid," he said suddenly. "This is awkward and stupid and I need to grow up and handle my own issues and I just need to figure things out on my own because if I don't start working on that now, I'm never gonna—"

"Wes!" Del interrupted. He just stared at her, painfully helpless-looking. "You're right, this is really awkward and I have no idea why you'd be coming to Blaine for relationship advice, but…" She shrugged a little. "I do know a little bit about relationships. And I think it's safe to say that you are long overdue for a girl's perspective on things."

He smiled slightly and snorted a small laugh. "I…I think you're right."

"Um…wanna come in? It's hot out." And she opened the door a little wider. "I've got tea?"

He smiled again, for real this time, and took a step through the door, patting Zoey's head as he went along. "Yeah…thanks."

**~x~**

"…and I just wish I knew what to do, you know? I mean, I love her so much and I just feel like I'm just sitting there like a _shmuck _sometimes letting her just be awesome and wonderful and I'm just there like…" He scrunched his face up and shrugged. "You know?"

Del just blinked at him. She was sitting on the ottoman, Zoey perched next to her, listening attentively to Wes, slumped over on the couch, as he talked on and on about his girlfriend troubles.

"Um…let me ask you a few questions, okay?" she said cautiously.

He nodded weakly.

"How long have you been dating her?"

"Almost two years."

"I see," Del sighed. "Now, you love her right?"

"Absolutely!"

"And she loves you, right?"

"Yes," he said breathlessly, smiling to himself as his eyes grew distant.

"Then, if you don't mind me asking, what _exactly_ is the problem?" She furrowed her brow and set her head in her hands, staring at him in confusion.

"It's just…I'm starting to get what people mean when they say that the"—he picked his hands up and punctuated the phrase with air-quotes—"'honeymoon phase' is over. We don't go any place really fancy anymore and now we're just kind of hanging out—and I love it, I really do!—but I'm afraid that she's less than thrilled."

"Does she seem to mind?"

"Not at all. She seems really happy, but—"

Del just sighed and smiled wearily. "What's her name again?"

"Lyn," he said airily.

"Well, I think Lyn is very lucky. You're a nice guy, Wes. Most guys probably wouldn't be able to notice any change." She patted his knee. "I wouldn't worry too much. As long as you are both happy, you shouldn't have to be really fancy anymore…but once and while wouldn't hurt."

Wes looked lost. "You really think—?"

"Shhh!" she hushed, putting a finger to her lips. "Stop thinking. Just…go and be lovely with your girlfriend. _You_ are great, _she_ sounds great, _it's_ all great."

He finally smiled again. "Thanks," he said shyly. "You know what? You're actually better at this than Blaine."

"Yeah," she agreed, nodding her head. "Why would you come to him with this anyway? He's clueless."

"It's a best friend thing. He has problems; I fix 'em. I have problems…I talk to myself on your couch and he nods appropriate times." He glanced at his watch and suddenly stood from the couch. "Oh! I have to go!" He walked backwards towards the door, stuttering as he went before stopping, taking a breath, composing himself and with the slightest nod of his head, saying, "Thank you, once again. And if there is anything I can ever help you…" but he trailed off as Del began to shake her head.

"I've got a brother, and sometimes he's one brother too much. Thanks for the offer, though." And she made her way to the door after him. "Hm." She stopped in the kitchen to drop of her tea mug and checked the clock. "Blaine said he'd be home early-ish tonight. He's got work in the morning."

Wes just shrugged and opened the door.

All Del heard from her spot in front of the sink was a surprised, "ah!" and a strained, high-pitched, "shit!"

Del bolted from the kitchen only to find Wes standing a few feet back from the doorway, looking rather uncomfortable, and Kurt, blushing viciously, standing next to a very confused and disappointed looking Blaine.

"Um…" Wes stuttered, clearing his throat and taking on a very serious, tone. "Please don't let me interrupt," he said, sliding out the door between Kurt and Blaine. "But"—he stared at Blaine, raised and eyebrow and pointed at Del, still standing with her mouth hanging open in the doorway of the kitchen—"keep it PG-13, please."

And with that, he turned on his heels, made his way down the few steps off of the porch, got into his car and drove away.

After a long second of silence, Del shook her head and smiled. "Hi, Kurt!" she chimed, waving a little.

"Hi, Del—" he said cautiously before being cut off by Blaine.

"What was he doing here?" he asked defensively, finally coming inside.

"Girl troubles," she answered plainly, crossing her arms.

"Oh," he said, relaxing considerably. "Did he want me to call him or—?"

"Don't worry," Del sighed, making her way up the stairs to her room. "I've got things under control."

Blaine looked taken back and Kurt couldn't help but laugh. "Poor Wes," Kurt sighed. "I just hope you're more of a help than he is." He nudged Blaine in the side and laughed.

"I am great with relationship advice!" Blaine fired back.

"Sure you are…" Kurt drawled sarcastically as Del continued up the staircase.

A minute later, Del sat at her desk, scrolling through her emails when she heard the familiar and telling noise of someone—some _people_?—plopping onto the couch.

And she couldn't help herself. "Remember what Wes said! KEEP IT PG-13 PLEASE!"

And then it went quiet, like she was home all alone.

**So I wrote the skeleton for this in the car on the way to Pennsylvania on Tuesday. It was something to do and I apologize if it is not exactly the best. I hope to write a lot in the following week so I will hopefully make up for it!**

**Oh, and since I haven't asked…ever. zoey21q . tumblr . com Please! It would make my day!**


	31. The Best and Worst of Times

**I promise I didn't forget about you! Hi everyone! I'm so so so so so so so so so so so sorry that I haven't updated in…a long time but I'm back and so is Glee and so are cute Blaine/Klaine moments that Del can talk Blaine through and suggest things about and help him cope with and UGH I AM SO HAPPY FOR THE RETURN OF CANNON I SWEAR I FELT LIKE I WAS SUFFOCATING WITHOUT IT.**

** Please enjoy!**

It was Sunday night. Blaine needed to sleep. Blaine couldn't sleep. There was too much in his head. He glanced at his clock. One twenty-two in the morning…fantastic.

With a sigh, he rolled out of bed, and clad in only his boxers and t-shirt, shuffled up the hall and down the stairs towards the kitchen. A glass of water couldn't hurt.

When he rounded the corner to the kitchen though, he was met with a burst of light from a small, green, LED lamp, perched on the kitchen counter. A small lamp that should have been on the desk in Del's room.

"What are you doing up?" he yawned. But Del didn't look up. Her nose was stuck in a large and tattered history book, she had 4 pencils stuck through a messy bun on the top of her head, her ear-buds were shoved in her ears, and from where Blaine was standing, her eyes looked absolutely bloodshot.

He took a step towards her and waved a hand in the air. Nothing. Groaning, he walked over beside her hand tapped her shoulder.

Reflexively, Del's hand shot up—along with her head—and smacked Blaine right in the chest.

"Ow…" he whined, rubbing a spot just below his collar bone and wincing. "Del, what are you doing?"

Panting from the startle, she yanked out the ear-buds and glared at him. "Studying," she said through her teeth. "I have my first test tomorrow. In my honors history class. And I'm going to fail." Her head dropped back down into the book and she let out a small moan.

"You're not going to fail," Blaine said, trying to be reassuring, as he sauntered across the room to grab a glass from the cupboard of the sink. "You're smart." He turned on the faucet and let the cold water run for a second before filling his glass up halfway and downing it in one gulp. "You like history…and…stuff." He filled his glass again and took a seat across the table from Del and her book.

"No. Just…no," she muttered into her book. "I don't even know why I'm in this class! I'm surrounded by these super like, over achieving nerds-slash-preps who think they're all that because they can name all the state capitols alphabetically—_backwards_… and…other…shit like that."

Blaine held back a laugh and took another gulp of water. "Well…um…I'm sure you'll do fine on the test."

Suddenly, her head shot up and she looked at him with flaring nostrils and fire in her eyes. "Fine isn't good enough, Blaine. This is honors. This is sophomore year and sophomore year is when colleges start looking at your grades." She was breathing heavily—and by now Blaine was _sure_ her eyes were bloodshot. "I can't just be fine, Blaine. I need to do well and I need to amaze everyone because I'm going to Yale or Harvard or Princeton and Yale and Harvard and Princeton don't accept fine, Blaine."

Blaine just stared at her for a moment, then with cautious movements, stretched out his hand and offered Del his glass of water.

She grabbed it and swallowed it all at once, slamming the glass down on the table. "Thanks," she breathed, propping her head up in her hands on the table.

"No problem."

They sat in silence for a moment, Del with her eyes closed, her chin in her hands, and Blaine contemplating whether or not it would be worth it to get up and get another glass of water.

"So what's your issue?" Del asked quietly, her eyes still closed.

"Can't sleep," he sighed.

"No shit, Sherlock." Del opened one eye and stared at him. "What's up?"

"I'm nervous about tomorrow," Blaine said, toying with a loose thread on his sleeve.

"You got a history test?" she asked halfheartedly.

"Ha ha ha…" Blaine said flatly, rolling his eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah. I do. It's all you've been talking about for…three weeks?" She huffed a breath of air and leaned back in her chair, tossing her head backwards to stare at the ceiling. "I still can't believe Mom let you do this."

"Please. I knew she would. She likes Kurt…and certainly has no problem not paying Dalton tuition."

"Still, though. I remember the hell she went through trying to get you there in the middle of the semester." Del lifted her head to look at Blaine, a sarcastic grin spread across her face. "You couldn't have gotten beat up in June or something?"

Immediately, an uneasy weight settled in the pit of Blaine's stomach and he furrowed his brow. "Can we not…can you just…?" He sighed. "You're not helping here."

"Sorry," Del said, raising her hands and cocking her head to the side. "Not the appropriate time, I get it, I really do." She looked down at her book and back up across the table. "Excuse me for my lack of filter. I'm going on 4 hours of nothing but American Civil war…you're lucky I didn't '_devote you to the devil_' or how every they vocally flipped people off back then."

Blaine was quiet for a second, before the corners of his mouth twitched in a weak smile. "That's from _A Tale of Two Cities_," he said fondly.

"Maybe," Del said flatly. "So?" She closed her book with a thud and crossed her arms. "I hated that book."

"I liked it," he sighed. "And I liked the message."

Del raised an eyebrow and stared at him. "You mean: if some dude married to the woman you love is about to die, drug him up and while you still have a shred of honor left to your pathetic life?" She blinked a few times. "Yeah. Great message. Practically a nursery rhyme."

Blaine but his lip and scowled at her. "No," he hissed. "It's all about…ya know…doing anything for the person you love…" He trailed off for a second and Del just watched as his eyes got distant.

"Blaine?"

"Even…even if it means making a sacrifice…" By now, he was actually smiling.

"Only you," Del said suddenly, shaking her head. "Only you."

"…Because it would make them happy…" he continued, completely oblivious to his sister's onslaught of exasperated looks and sarcastic comments.

And then he just sat there for a moment, and Del shut up, thinking he was done, and it was eerily quiet in white and blue kitchen, Del's side of the table brightly lit in harsh light and Blaine sitting in almost complete silence.

And then Blaine leaned back in his chair and said softly, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done…"

And without missing a beat, Del replied: "Yeah, and the rest of that line is something about him being happy about being dead."

Blaine raised his eyes to look at her, aggravation apparent in his expression.

"Sorry, but you can't be selectively deep. Take the quote as a whole or don't quote it at all." Del shrugged and went for the glass in front of her, before remembering it was empty.

He took a deep breath, and looked up, contemplating. "No," he said after a minute. "It says rest, not death specifically." Yawning, he folded his hands and set them on the table. He took another deep breath and looked, almost pleadingly at Del across from him, occupying herself by attempting to scrape off the paint of her pencil with her fingernail.

"Look, Del, this…I honestly have no idea what I'm doing." His tone made Del look up: an odd combination of trepidation, and determination. "But I know in my gut that this isn't just for Kurt." He swallowed hard. "I'm chasing down my demos, here. For the longest time, I've had this little…_thing_ in the back of my head that just kept saying things like 'coward' and…just…ugh…" He rubbed his eyes and sighed. "I haven't been able to rest, Del. I thought that Dalton would let me rest, but…it just changed everything from outer demons to inner demons."

Del sat expressionless, just looking at him and blinking frequently. "Deep," she finally mumbled, nodding slowly.

"Del, go to bed," he said flatly.

"I'm really not trying to be insensitive. Just…don't do anything stupid. Don't act like it wasn't a big deal, okay? Because I know it is. It's a big, big deal." She paused. "And…stick close to Kurt, alright? He gets it, too."

Blaine said nothing, but smiled and stood from the table. "Go to bed, Del."

"I will."

"Okay." He walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his room, closing the door behind him with a click that seemed to echo in the quiet house.

And he fell asleep. And he dreamed of him and Kurt in France fighting against Del in a revolutionary war.

And in the morning he wasn't nervous.

**My endings are crap. You all know that by now. Whatever. What do you think? LEAVE ME REVIEWS AND I SHALL LOVE YOU UNTIL I DIE. **

**Also: (.com) **

**COME FOLLOW ME I HAVE BECOME SO MUCH MORE QUALITY SINCE THE LAST TIME I SHAMELESSLY SELF-PROMOTED. **


	32. Roses

**Crazy inspiration + Adorability + Insomnia = THREE HOUR UPDATE TURN OUT. **

**I'm going to sleep now before I die. Please excuse any glaring typos or grammar errors, for it is late and I am slightly delirious. **

**ENJOY!**

Del was too engrossed in her history homework to hear Blaine sweep through the door that afternoon. Nor did she hear his bag hit the floor of the living room, or him kick of his shoes, or him humming a tune.

What she did hear was the sound of crashing glass and a string of muttered curses.

"...Blaine?" she called down from her room.

Silence.

"Blaine!" she tried again.

Still nothing.

Sighing, she marched out of her room and down the stairs towards the kitchen, and when she rounded the corner, she was met with Blaine standing in front of one of the cupboards, surrounded by glass containers: a few on the counter, several in his hands, and one tall one clenched in his teeth.

"Um…what are you doing?" She furrowed her eyebrows and crossed her arms, leaning on the doorframe and staring her brother down.

"_Mmryinoofineafozfozaflars_," he mumbled around the glassware in his mouth.

"Wha—" but before she could finish, something sitting on the table caught her eye.

Resting on the edge of the kitchen table, hidden partially by an enormous, blue glass punch bowl, was a bunch of half-wilted, red and yellow roses, tied together with a fine red string.

"What are those?" Del asked, a smile creeping across her face.

"Hm…?" Blaine dropped the vase from his teeth to his hand and closed the cupboard, before turning around and spotting the punch bowl—and the flowers. "Oh, yeah, I'm Tony." Groaning, he picked up the bowl and set it on the counter, not minding to put it away.

There was a pause from Del before it finally clicked. "Hey! That's great! Congratulations! Fantastic! That doesn't explain where these came from!" Del pulled out a chair and sat at the table, reaching for the flowers. "…Or why they're half dead."

Blaine immediately swatted her hand away and picked them up himself, toying with the petals and frowning as a few drier ones fell off into his hand. "Kurt got them for me…on Wednesday." He sighed and walked the bouquet over to the sink, picking up a straggling vase from the counter on his way over. "I left them in my locker by accident."

"For _two_ days?"

Blaine flicked on the sink and filled the container half-way up. "More water?" he asked, holding it up to show Del and raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, more water—but _two days, Blaine_?"

"The first day it was an accident. The second day, Kurt was at my locker at the end of the day and I knew that if I pulled them out with him right there, he'd hate me…" Blaine set the vase under the water again, and Del rolled her eyes.

"…_whipped_…" Del coughed under her breath.

"What?" Blaine looked up from where he was trying to stuff the whole bunch into the very small container.

"Nothing…" she sighed. "So, you got the part."

"Yeah," Blaine said quietly, smiling to himself. "I can't believe it."

"_Pshaw_! I can. You _reek_ of Tony, dude." Del leaned forward and rested her forehead on the table, yawning and closing her eyes. "You were singing that audition song in your sleep."

She waited for a reply, but when there was none, she lifted her head up, only to find Blaine hopelessly trying to cram a few remaining flowers into the already stuffed vase. Slowly, she sighed and stood up, made her way over to her brother and nudged him out of the way, mumbling something along the lines of, "don't kill them any more than they already are, okay?"

"Sit down and tell me everything," she instructed, plucking the roses from the container and emptying the water down the sink before returning it to the cupboard and grabbing another, wider vase.

"Um…well…the flowers or the casting?" He plopped into one of the kitchen chairs and watched Del flit around the kitchen.

"Whatever." She crossed the room and pulled a pair of gardening scissors out of a drawer and made her way back to the sink.

"Um, well, the casting was boring, really. The list went up, we huddled, and we flipped our shit. Nothing too out of the ordinary." He shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

"Okay…then the flowers." Del pulled a completely brown stem from the bunch and flipped it across the room to the trash can. Blaine winced at the sound.

"Well, I don't even know where I was going but it was in the middle of the day and it was outside and we were on these stairs and he just came around the corner and was all sweet and told me that an infiltrate of his had told him that I had the role and…" Blaine drifted off, picking up a little red petal off the table. "It was sweet."

"Sounds like it." Del grabbed the bunch in one hand and began to methodically snip off the brown, dry ends of the stems.

"What are you doing?" Blaine asked, shaken from his thoughts.

"Don't you remember?" Del snipped off two ends at once, making a plunking noise as they hit the stainless steel of the kitchen sink. "Grandma always told me to cut off the ends of flowers before you put them in water. It let's them get the water better. Fresh"—another few ends fell into the sink—"start."

"Hmm," Blaine hummed, nodding.

"There you go." Del set down the vase of roses on the table and slid them in front of Blaine. Though not as great as they were fresh, they were a marked improvement from what had been laying on the table a few minutes ago. "Good as…not dead."

Blaine chuckled half-heartedly. "Yeah, well, I've got homework and…lines to learn." All attempts at hiding a smile went out the window at the last part of that sentence.

"Ditto." And after Del saw that the vase was set in the very center of the kitchen table, she headed upstairs to her room.

What she didn't see was Blaine follow behind her, right after plucking a single red rose from the bunch.


End file.
